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Classics 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 

AND 

TRA^T^S WITH A DONKEY 



STEVENSOi; 




Class. 'flf f>4-^ 

Book . L Lo J, 

GopyrightU" ., 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




Robert Louis Stevenson at the Age of Twenty-six 
From a charcoal drawing by Mrs. Stevenson 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 

AND 

TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 




BY 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 





1^ 



Edited 
With Introduction and Notes 

BY 

LOUIS FRANKLIN SNOW, Ph.D. 

Dean of Teachers College, State University 
Lexington, Ky. 




GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 




^' 






^ 



COPYRIGHT, 191 1, BY 
LOUIS FRANKLIN SNOW 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
81 1.3 



GINN AND COMPANY- PRO- 
PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



©cu:^92I(^s 



I 



PREFACE 

A careful reading of these selections from the works of Robert 
Louis Stevenson should not only furnish a good guide to the 
pupil in his pursuit of rhetorical excellence but awaken and 
stimulate his interest in wholesome literature of a familiar char- 
acter. The sketches are to be read, not minutely studied ; to be 
enjoyed, not dissected. A book that was planned as '' a jolly 
book of gossip " fails of its mission when employed as the text 
of a homily. 

Yet the activity of the author's mind has compelled annota- 
tions somewhat extensive, the purpose of which has been to 
supply information sufficient to elucidate the meaning of the 
references to historical and literary events, in order that the 
spirit of the text may be appreciated clearly and distinctly. 

A slovenly habit of reading is easily acquired. Intelligent 
reading demands that we should not only comprehend the 
sense of the words but be able to answer as fully as possible 
the emotional appeal of the composition, and vitally enjoy the 
author's mood. 

The editor is indebted to Miss Harriet Day of the high 
school, Trenton, New Jersey, for her kindness in reading the 
proof of the notes on the text. 

Permission to employ the text used by Messrs. Charles 

Scribner's Sons in the Biographical Edition of the works of 

Robert Louis Stevenson has been kindly given by those 

publishers. 

LOUIS FRANKLIN SNOW 
Lexington, Kentucky 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Introduction vii 

Biographical Sketch vii 

Critical Appreciation viii 

Authorities and References xiv 

An Inland Voyage i 

Travels with a Donkey 131 

Notes, Explanatory and Critical 237 



INTRODUCTION 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 

Robert Louis Stevenson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, 
November 13, 1850, the only child of Thomas and Margaret 
Isabella (Balfour) Stevenson. Through his father's family he 
was in direct line of descent from the distinguished engineers 
who so radically improved the lighthouse service of northern 
Britain during the early nineteenth century. His mother's 
parents and grandparents were noted for their scholarly habits, 
and Stevenson's strong bent toward the profession of letters, 
together with his meager endowment of constitutional vigor, 
seems to have been his natural maternal inheritance. 

His early education was somewhat unsystematic and was 
constantly interrupted by enforced absences in search of a less 
rigorous climate better suited to the state of his health. Yet he 
succeeded in preparing for college and entered Edinburgh Uni- 
versity in 1867. His father's dearest wish was that Louis 
should follow the family profession of civil engineering, but when 
this course was found to be inexpedient he reluctantly permitted 
a change of plan, stipulating that his son should prepare for 
entrance to the Scottish bar. Though the conditions for exami- 
nation were fulfilled, in 1875, the legal profession had no attrac- 
tions to hold Stevenson in its exacting routine. His controlling 
purpose to become a writer was strengthened, as the years 
increased, by association with such men as Edmund Gosse, 
Andrew Lang, and Sidney Colvin. As one after the other of 
his books appeared, his friends and critics observed his genius 
developing under the watchful and jealous guidance of a 
discriminating and careful self-criticism. 



Vlll INTRODUCTION 

Stevenson's volatile temperament and incipient tuberculosis 
of the lungs soon caused him to adopt, as his manner of life, a 
wandering career. His journey ings covered a wide extent of 
territory in Europe and America. Southern France proved too 
capricious in temperature. The Adirondacks were uncomfort- 
ably cold. At length, in the island of Samoa, in the southern 
Pacific Ocean, he found that equable condition of climate which 
his system needed. Thither, on June 28, 1888, he emigrated 
with his wife, a Mrs. Osborne, whom he had first met in the 
artists' colony near Paris, and here he resided until his death, 
which occurred after a brief illness, December 3, 1894. 

CRITICAL APPRECIATION 

The writer whose life has been thus briefly sketched was the 
most companionable of men. Friendship pursued him like a 
passion. His books appeal to us in a peculiarly friendly and 
familiar way. He never writes down to his audience, but ad- 
dresses it in a simple, plain manner and compels and stimulates 
the attention of his readers by the rapidity of the movement of 
his thought. In particular, his poems, written to commemorate 
a somewhat colorless invalid childhood, have all these qualities. 
Their rhythm first caught our youthful ears and it continues to 
charm them. The ideas, as one after the other they rise to our 
growing comprehension, somehow photograph themselves into 
local backgrounds supplied by our own experience with the ills 
to which juvenile flesh is heir. 

We have all been compelled to spend some of our time in the 
Land of Counterpane, though our imaginations failed to mirror 
its images as clearly as did the mind of Stevenson. We too have 
built castles of blocks and have torn them down as ruthlessly 
as he. We have traveled as far as he in carriages, boats, and 
trains made of the nursery chairs, and have climbed the tree at 
the corner of the garden and viewed the forbidden land beyond. 



INTRODUCTION ix 

This longing for the forbidden land, this desire to see strange 
and unknown countries, appears to have tormented Stevenson 
very early. He shows in this "Inland Voyage" his intense 
sympathy with the poor driver of the hotel omnibus, who en- 
vied him his power to travel ; and he has left a memorandum 
describing his own juvenile habit of watching the trains as they 
passed to and fro in the Edinburgh station, with a keen yearning 
to enter and ride to the world's end. There is in his shorter 
stories an interesting presentation of the other side of the matter, 
in the tale of the man who never went, and whose ambition to 
see what lay beyond the mountains remained unfulfilled.-^ 

Owing to the almost continuously precarious condition of 
his health Stevenson, as we have seen, visited many lands and 
peoples, frequently under unusual conditions of time and cir- 
cumstance. Of a peculiarly weak constitution, partly inherited 
and partly due to unsanitary living conditions, affectionate but 
ignorant nursing, and the severity of the climate of his native 
Scotland, he early found himself a wanderer. The Bohemian 
instinct latent in his nature was fostered and increased by his 
continual migrations, at first southward, later westward to Amer- 
ica and to the islands of the southern seas. Yet however far he 
wanders from his ancestral hearthstone, with the true Scottish 
instinct he ever turns back in memory to the land that gave 
him birth. It seems as if the farther he roams the more vivid 
these pictures become, as if distance by some subtle necromancy 
rendered their lines more distinct. 

In the books which fell from his hand in the Samoan cottage 
at the close of his life there are some of his most clear-cut and 
accurate descriptions of people and scenery in far-away Scotland. 
When as a semi-invalid passenger he visited the lighthouse out- 
posts which the genius of his father and grandfather had placed 
on the exposed promontories and islands of the British realm, 
he may have kept some rough diary to assist his '' Random 

1 " Will o' the Mill," published 1877. 



X INTRODUCTION 

Memories " of his experiences, but the indelible impression is 
recorded in his stirring story '' Kidnapped " and in its not less 
vivid sequel ^' David Balfour." 

In these stories and in " The Black Arrow " Stevenson relied 
for the vitality of the descriptions on a natural power of obser- 
vation cultivated into artistic excellence by long practice and 
minute self-criticism. In '' Treasure Island " we find his skill 
subjected to a supreme test, for, with the basis of fact re- 
moved, the creation of his imagination is found to possess all 
the qualities of vigor and of strength embodied in the semi- 
historical stories. Here his fancy is more free and his con- 
structive skill greater than in the other tales. It seems as if 
his unfettered spirit rejoiced in its liberty, and roamed the ideal 
world as his own soul, imprisoned in his frail body, longed to 
enter the active strife of life. 

One of Stevenson's early ambitions was to become a soldier. 
Probably to this love of things military we owe the vivacity of 
his sketches of camps and the cleverness with which he excites 
our interest in duels and combats of all sorts. Even when he 
reduces the contestants to the lowest possible terms and sets 
one man's nature warring with itself, his keenness for " the 
rigor of the game " relieves the gruesome horror of much of 
its blackness and supplies to the narrative of Dr. Jekyll and 
Mr. Hyde a sympathy and flavor of real human life, — quali- 
ties wanting in much of the literature of the supernatural, as, 
for example, in the tales of Edgar Allan Poe. 

As a literary artist of the weird and grotesque Stevenson 
walks closer by the side of his greater master in the art of 
story telling, Charles Dickens. In fact, in many points the 
resemblance between these two writers is remarkably strong. 
Their manner of attack, their rapidity, their graphic skill, their 
innate sense of the truly dramatic, their power of dissecting the 
emotion of horror and of weighing the effective value of its com- 
ponent elements, may very profitably be compared. But Dickens, 



INTRODUCTION xi 

naturally too theatrical to be wholly sincere, frequently carries 
the attempt to stir our fears beyond our sober acquiescence, 
while he himself continues to believe in the reality of the bogy 
his imagination has created. Stevenson is always ready to lift 
the mask, and frequently, as in '^ The Dynamiter," "The Wrong 
Box," and in the "New Arabian Nights," but half assumes it. 

Robert Louis Stevenson cannot for long be any one but him- 
self. It is for himself, and for the style which he made his 
own, that he will be longest remembered. How carefully he 
labored to attain excellence in the art of writing is too well 
known to need repetition. Misjudgment has unfortunately fol- 
lowed the misinterpretation of his use of the phrase " sedulous 
ape" in connection with his training in composition. Stevenson 
is never the mere copyist. A copyist has no ideal beyond the 
exact reproduction of his model. Not even his severest critic 
would allege this to be true of Stevenson. He approached the 
art of writing as the young medieval apprentice did his trade, 
reverent and obedient to his masters, to produce his master- 
piece as the exemplification of the principles taught and as a 
revelation of his own ability. 

Stevenson's hold on the principles of what constitutes good 
writing was incorporated by him in an essay which, in this 
connection, is well worthy of study. Tried by his own tests 
his prose literary achievements show natural talent of a high 
order, steadily increased in power and worth by practice. To 
adapt his own words,^ we may say that he keeps his phrases 
large, rhythmical, and pleasing to the ear, that he combines and 
contrasts his double, treble, and quadruple pattern, that he art- 
fully combines the prime elements of language into phrases 
musical in the mouth, and that he possesses a singular ability 
in choosing apt, explicit, and communicative words. 

This skill in the choice of words gives to Stevenson's writings 
a singular distinction which for want of a better term may be 

1 Essay on Style in Literature, concluding paragraph. 



xii INTRODUCTION 

called effervescence. His natural spontaneity of temper pre- 
vented dullness. His sense of humor, mellowed into sweetness 
by the eternal feminine in his character, combined with an in- 
stinct for harmony of sound, provided the stimulus necessary 
to form, from his earlier clear, pregnant sentences, a later style, 
bright, sparkling, and charged with an energy which makes it 
wholly his own. 

Part of his skill may be due to his ability to employ the 
adjective effectively, and much may be said of him as a master 
of prose rhythm. In "An Inland Voyage" and in "Travels 
with a Donkey " there is chiefly noticeable an economy of 
phrase which forces t1ie~details of the picture upon our at- 
tention, drives our interest before it, and leaves us possessed 
of a full understanding of the situation, the circumstances, and 
all the incidents of these irregular pilgrimages. 

The first journey was undertaken in the late summer of 1876, 
when Stevenson was in his twenty-sixth year. He traveled in 
company with Sir Walter Simpson, an old college chum, by 
canoe from Antwerp to Paris, and planned, before the trip was 
undertaken, to make and publish " a jolly book of gossip " 
about it and so defray the necessary expenses. In this he 
was successful, as he was in gaining a temporary victory 
over what he terms "pretty mouldy health," although the 
adventurers encountered " the worst weather he ever saw 
in France." 

Stevenson had already made a slight mark in literature and 
a litde money by writing magazine articles, but this was his first 
book. For it he received from Mr. Kegan Paul the amount of 
twenty pounds. It was first published in the early part of 1878 
and met with a very favorable reception at the hands of the 
critics. Writing to his mother from Paris in June of that 
year, Stevenson says : " I was more surprised at the tone of 
the critics than I suppose any one else. And the effect it 
has produced on me is one of shame. If they liked that so 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

much I ought to have given them something better, that 's all. 
And I shall try to do so." 

In the effort to do something better than this his first book, 
Stevenson voyaged through many forms and modes of litera- 
ture. Sir Sidney Colvin in his admirable introduction to the 
correspondence of Stevenson summarizes a few of the more 
salient types. He even ventures to contrast Stevenson's work 
with that of Sterne, of Poe, and of Sir Walter Scott in a man- 
ner not at all to Stevenson's disadvantage, and closes with 
an eloquently pathetic parenthesis, " We must remember that 
Stevenson died at the age when Scott wrote ' Waverley.' " 

Stevenson's second book, '^ Travels with a Donkey," appeared 
more than a year after "An Inland Voyage," in June, 1879. 
In the spring of that year he wrote to R. A. M. Stevenson : 
" My book is through the press. It has good passages. I can 
say no more. A chapter called The Monks, another A Camp 
in the Dark, a third A Night among the Pines, — each of 
these has, I think, some stuff in it in the way of writing. 
But lots of it is mere protestations to F., most of which I 
think you will understand. That is to me the main thread 
of interest." ^ 

Stevenson's premature death may have removed a man of 
letters whose mission it might have been to give, in his maturer 
years, an additional luster to English prose. Yet the bereave- 
ment the world of literature sustained was, at first, over- 
shadowed by a peculiarly intimate form of grief over the loss of 
the man. His amiable characteristics of disposition attached to 
him the warmest regard of his associates and enshrouded his 
memory with a veil of almost holy affection. This captivating 
power of his personality pervades his writings, and even to 
those of us who can claim acquaintance with him only through 
his books there is still the feeling that we shall always possess 
in him a friend and a companion. 

1 " Life of Robert Louis Stevenson," by Graham Balfour, vol. I, p. 191. 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

AUTHORITIES AND REFERENCES 

The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Charles Scribner's 
Sons ; preferably the Biographical Edition, 27 vols., which contains 
entertaining and explanatory prefaces by Mrs. Stevenson). The 
Thistle Edition contains also the Vailima Letters (letters of Robert 
Louis Stevenson, as edited by Sidney Colvin) and the authoritative 
life of Stevenson by his cousin Graham Balfour. The sketch in the 
Dictionary of National Biography was written by Sidney Colvin. A 
briefer notice is to be found in the New International Encyclopedia. 

Other biographies are " Robert Louis Stevenson," by Margaret M. 
Black, in the Famous Scots Series (Charles Scribner's Sons); " Robert 
Louis Stevenson," by T. Cope Cornford (Dodd, Mead & Company); 
" Robert Louis Stevenson : A Life in Criticism," by H. Bellyse 
Baildon (A. Wessels). 

Helpful studies are " Stevenson's Attitude to Life," by John 
Franklin Genung (Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.) ; " Robert Louis 
Stevenson," by Walter Raleigh (Edward Arnold), 

J. A. Hammerton has collected in his " Stevensoniana " an inter- 
esting amount of mg^erial, and in his book " In the Track of R. L. 
Stevenson " he has performed a service valuable to the teacher in 
following the course of our author through the canals of Holland 
and over the passes of the Cevennes. This book is illustrated with 
photographs. 

William Lyon Phelps's essay on Robert Louis Stevenson in 
" Essays on Modern Novelists " (Macmillan) will be found sugges- 
tive. It is supplemented by a complete bibliography from which the 
following list of the more important of the writings of Stevenson 
is taken : 

1878. An Inland Voyage 

1879. Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes 

1 88 1. Virginibus Puerisque, and other Papers 

1882. Familiar Studies of Men and Books 

1882. New Arabian Nights 

1883. Treasure Island 
1885. Prince Otto 

1885. A Child's Garden of Verses 

1885. The Dynamiter : More New Arabian Nights 

1886. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde 



INTRODUCTION xv 

1886. Kidnapped: being Memoirs of the Adventures of 

David Balfour in the year 1751 

1887. The Merry Men, and Other Tales 

1887. Memories and Portraits 

1888. The Black Arrow 

1889. The Master of Ballantrae 

1889. The Wrong Box 

1890. Father Damien : an Open Letter to the Rev. Dr. Hyde 

of Honolulu 
1892. Across the Plains, with other Memories and Essays 

1892. The Wrecker 

1893. Island Nights' Entertainments 

1893. Catriona: a Sequel to Kidnapped (in America entitled 

David Balfour) 

1894. The Ebb Tide 

1895. Vailima Letters 

1896. Weir of Hermiston 

1897. St. Ives: being the Adventures of a French Prisoner 

in England 
1899. Letters to his Family and Friends, selected and edited 
by Sidney Colvin, 2 vols. 




Map B 



Mai- a. Route of An Inland Voyage 
Map B. Route of Travels with a Donkey 



AN INLAND VOYAGE 



TO SIR WALTER GRINDLAY SIMPSON, Bart. 

My dear Cigarette, 

It was enough that you should have shared so liberally in the rams 
and portages of our voyage ; that you should have had so hard a 
battle to recover the derelict Arethusa on the flooded Oise ; and that 
you should thenceforth have piloted a mere wreck of mankind to 
Origny Sainte-Benoite and a supper so eagerly desired. It was per- 
haps more than enough, as you once somewhat piteously complained, 
that I should have set down all the strong language to you, and kept 
the appropriate reflections for myself. I could not in decency expose 
you to share the disgrace of another and more public shipwreck. But 
now that this voyage of ours is going into a cheap edition, that peril, 
we shall hope, is at an end, and I may put your name on the burgee. 

But I cannot pause till I have lamented the fate of our two ships. 

That, sir, was not a fortunate day when we projected the possession 

of a canal barge ; it was not a fortunate day when we shared our 

daydream with the most hopeful of daydreamers. For a while, 

indeed, the world looked smilingly. The barge was procured and 

christened, and as the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne, lay for 

some months, the admired of all admirers, in a pleasant river and 

under the walls of an ancient town. M. Mattras, the accomplished 

carpenter of Moret, had made her a center of emulous labor ; and you 

will not have forgotten the amount of sweet champagne consumed 

in the inn at the bridge end, to give zeal to the workmen and speed 

to the work. On the financial aspect, I would not willingly dwell. 

The Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne rotted in the stream 

where she was beautified. She felt not the impulse of the breeze ; 

she was never harnessed to the patient track horse. And when at 

length she was sold, by the indignant carpenter of Moret, there were 

sold along with her the Arethusa and the Cigarette, she of cedar, 

she, as we knew so keenly on a portage, of solid-hearted English 

oak. Now these historic vessels fly the tricolor and are known by 

new and alien names. 

R. L. S. 



PREFACE 



To equip so small a book with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin 
against proportion. But a preface is more than an author can resist, 
for it is the reward of his labors. When the foundation stone is laid, 
the architect appears with his plans, and struts for an hour before 
the public eye. So with the writer in his preface : he may have 
never a word to say, but he must show himself for a moment in the 
portico, hat in hand, and with an urbane demeanor. 

It is best, in such circumstance, to represent a delicate shade of 
manner between humility and superiority : as if the book had been 
written by some one else, and you had merely run over it and inserted 
what was good. But for my part I have not yet learned the trick to 
that perfection ; I am not yet able to dissemble the warmth of my 
sentiments towards a reader ; and if I meet him on the threshold, it 
is to invite him in with country cordiality. 

To say truth, I had no sooner finished reading this little book in 
proof than I was seized upon by a distressing apprehension. 

It occurred to me that I might not only be the first to read these 
pages, but the last as well ; that I might have pioneered this very 
smiling tract of country all in vain, and find not a soul to follow in 
my steps. The more I thought, the more I disliked the notion ; until 
the distaste grew into a sort of panic terror, and I rushed into this 
Preface, which is no more than an advertisement for readers. 

What am I to say for my book.? Caleb and Joshua brought back 
from Palestine a formidable bunch of grapes ; alas ! my book pro- 
duces naught so nourishing ; and for the matter of that, we live in 
an age when people prefer a definition to any quantity of fruit. 

I wonder, would a negative be found enticing.? for, from the 
negative point of view, I flatter myself this volume has a certain 
stamp. Although it runs to considerably upwards of two hundred 
pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of God's 
universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a 
better one myself, — I really do not know where my head can have 

5 



6 PREFACE 

been. I seemed to have forgotten all that makes it glorious to be 
man. 'T is an omission that renders the book philosophically unim- 
portant ; but I am in hopes the eccentricity may please in frivolous 
circles. 

To the friend who accompanied me I owe many thanks already, 
indeed I wish I owed him nothing else ; but at this moment I feel 
towards him an almost exaggerated tenderness. He, at least, will 
become my reader — if it were only to follow his own travels along- 
side of mine. 

R. L. S. 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 

We made a great stir in Antwerp Docks. A stevedore and a 
lot of dock porters took up the two canoes, and ran with them 
for the slip. A crowd of children followed cheering. The Cig- 
arette went off in a splash and a bubble of small breaking water. 
Next moment the Arethusa was after her. A steamer was com- 5 
ing down, men on the paddle box shouted hoarse warnings, the 
stevedore and his porters were bawling from the quay. But in 
a stroke or two the canoes were away out in the middle of the 
Scheldt, and all steamers, and stevedores, and other longshore 
vanities were left behind. 10 

The sun shone brightly; the tide was making — four jolly 
miles an hour ; the wind blew steadily, with occasional squalls. 
For my part, I had never been in a canoe under sail in my life ; 
and my first experiment out in the middle of this big river was 
not made without some trepidation. What would happen when 1 5 
the wind first caught my little canvas ? I suppose it was almost 
as tr}ang a venture into the regions of the unknown as to pub- 
lish a first book, or to marry. But my doubts were not of long 
duration ; and in five minutes you will not be surprised to learn 
that I had tied my sheet. 20 

I own I was a little struck by this circumstance myself; of 
course, in company with the rest of my fellow men, I had always 
tied the sheet in a sailing boat ; but in so litde and crank a con- 
cern as a canoe, and with these charging squalls, I was not pre- 
pared to find myself follow the same principle ; and it inspired 25 
me with some contemptuous views of our regard for life. It is 
certainly easier to smoke with the sheet fastened ; but I had 
never before weighed a comfortable pipe of tobacco against an 

7 



8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

obvious risk, and gravely elected for the comfortable pipe. It is 
a commonplace, that we cannot answer for ourselves before we 
have been tried. But it is not so common a reflection, and surely 
more consoling, that we usually find ourselves a great deal braver 
5 and better than we thought. I believe this is every one's expe- 
rience : but an apprehension that they may belie themselves in 
the future prevents mankind from trumpeting this cheerful senti- 
ment abroad. I wish sincerely, for it would have saved me much 
trouble, there had been some one to put me in a good heart 

lo about life when I was younger; to tell me how dangers are 
most portentous on a distant sight ; and how the good in a man's 
spirit will not suffer itself to be overlaid, and rarely or never 
deserts him in the hour of need. But we are all for tootling 
on the sentimental flute in literature ; and not a man among us 

15 will go to the head of the march to sound the heady drums. 

It was agreeable upon the river. A barge or two went past 
laden with hay. Reeds and willows bordered the stream ; and 
cattle and gray, venerable horses came and hung their mild heads 
over the embankment. Here and there was a pleasant village 

20 among trees, with a noisy shipping yard ; here and there a villa 
in a lawn. The wind served us well up the Scheldt and there- 
after up the Rupel ; and we were running pretty free when we 
began to sight the brickyards of Boom, lying for a long way on 
the right bank of the river. The left bank was still green and 

25 pastoral, with alleys of trees along the embankment, and here 
and there a flight of steps to serve a ferry, where perhaps there 
sat a woman with her elbows on her knees, or an old gentleman 
with a staff and silver spectacles. But Boom and its brickyards 
grew smokier and shabbier with every minute ; until a great 

30 church with a clock, and a wooden bridge over the river, 
indicated the central quarters of the town. 

Boom is not a nice place, and is only remarkable for one 
thing : that the majority of the inhabitants have a private opinion 
that they can speak English, which is not justified by fact. This 



ANTWERP TO BOOM 9 

gave a kind of haziness to our intercourse. As for the Hotel de 
la Navigation, I think it is the worst feature of the place. It 
boasts of a sanded parlor, with a bar at one end, looking on the 
street ; and another sanded parlor, darker and colder, with an 
empty bird cage and a tricolor subscription box by way of sole 5 
adornment, where we made shift to dine in the company of three 
uncommunicative engineer apprentices and a silent bagman. The 
food, as usual in Belgium, was of a nondescript occasional char- 
acter ; indeed I have never been able to detect anything in the 
nature of a meal among this pleasing people ; they seem to peck 10 
and trifle with viands all day long in an amateur spirit : tenta- 
tively French, truly German, and somehow falling between the 
two. 

The empty bird cage, swept and garnished, and with no trace 
of the old piping favorite, save where two wires had been pushed 1 5 
apart to hold its lump of sugar, carried with it a sort of grave- 
yard cheer. The engineer apprentices would have nothing to 
say to us, nor indeed to the bagman ; but talked low and spar- 
ingly to one another, or raked us in the gaslight with a gleam 
of spectacles. For though handsome lads, they were all (in the 20 
Scotch phrase) barnacled. 

There was an English maid in the hotel, who had been long 
enough out of England to pick up all sorts of funny foreign 
idioms, and all sorts of curious foreign ways, which need not here 
be specified. She spoke to us very fluently in her jargon, asked 25 
us information as to the manners of the present day in England, 
and obligingly corrected us when we attempted to answer. But 
as we were dealing with a woman, perhaps our information was 
not so much thrown away as it appeared. The sex likes to pick 
up knowledge and yet preserve its superiority. It is good policy, 30 
and almost necessary in the circumstances. If a man finds a 
woman admires him, were it only for his acquaintance with geog- 
raphy, he will begin at once to build upon the admiration. It 
is only by unintermittent snubbing that the pretty ones can keep 



lO AN INLAND VOYAGE 

us in our place. Men, as Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe would 
have said, '' are such encroachersT For my part, I am body and 
soul with the women ; and after a well-married couple, there is 
nothing so beautiful in the world as the myth of the divine hunt- 
5 ress. It is no use for a man to take to the woods ; we know 
him ; Anthony tried the same thing long ago, and had a pitiful 
time of it by all accounts. But there is this about some women, 
which overtops the best gymnosophist among men, that they suf- 
fice to themselves, and can walk in a high and cold zone without 

10 the countenance of any trousered being. I declare, although the 
reverse of a professed ascetic, I am more obliged to women for 
this ideal than I should be to the majority of them, or indeed to 
any but one, for a spontaneous kiss. There is nothing so en- 
couraging as the spectacle of self-sufficiency. And when I think 

15 of the slim and lovely maidens, running the woods all night to 
the note of Diana's horn ; moving among the old oaks, as fancy- 
free as they ; things of the forest and the starlight, not touched 
by the commotion of man's hot and turbid life — although there 
are plenty other ideals that I should prefer — I find my heart 

20 beat at the thought of this one. 'T is to fail in life, but to fail 
with what a grace ! That is not lost which is not regretted. And 
where — here slips out the male — where would be much of the 
glory of inspiring love, if there were no contempt to overcome? 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 

Next morning, when we set forth on the Willebroek Canal, 
the rain began heavy and chill. The water of the canal stood at 
about the drinking temperature of tea ; and under this cold as- 
persion, the surface was covered with steam. The exhilaration 
of departure, and the easy motion of the boats under each stroke 5 
of the paddles, supported us through this misfortune while it 
lasted ; and when the cloud passed and the sun came out again, 
our spirits went up above the range of stay-at-home humors. A 
good breeze rustled and shivered in the rows of trees that bor- 
dered the canal. .The leaves flickered in and out of the light in 10 
tumultuous masses. It seemed sailing weather to eye and ear ; 
but down between the banks, the wind reached us only in faint 
and desultory puffs. There was hardly enough to steer by. 
Progress was intermittent and unsatisfactory. A jocular person, 
of marine antecedents, hailed us from the towpath with a ^'C'est 15 
vite, ma is c^est longT 

The canal was busy enough. Every now and then we met or 
overtook a long string of boats, with great green tillers ; high 
sterns with a window on either side of the rudder, and perhaps 
a jug or a flowerpot in one of the windows ; a dingy following 20 
behind ; a woman busied about the day's dinner, and a handful 
of children. These barges were all tied one behind the other with 
towropes, to the number of twenty-five or thirty ; and the line 
was headed and kept in motion by a steamer of strange construc- 
tion. It had neither paddle wheel nor screw; but by some gear 25 
not rightly comprehensible to the unmechanical mind, it fetched 
up over its bow a small bright chain which lay along the bottom 
of the canal, and paying it out again over the stern, dragged 

II 



12 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

itself forward, link by link, with its whole retinue of loaded scows. 
Until one had found out the key to the enigma, there was some- 
thing solemn and uncomfortable in the progress of one of these 
trains, as it moved gently along the water with nothing to mark 
5 its advance but an eddy alongside dying away into the wake. 
Of all the creatures of commercial enterprise, a canal barge 
is by far the most delightful to consider. It may spread its sails, 
and then you see it sailing high above the tree tops and the wind- 
mill, sailing on the aqueduct, sailing through the green cornlands : 

10 the most picturesque of things amphibious. Or the horse plods 
along at a footpace as if there were no such thing as business 
in the world ; and the man dreaming at the tiller sees the same 
spire on the horizon all day long. It is a mystery how things 
ever get to their destination at this rate ; and to see the barges 

15 waiting their turn at a lock, affords a fine lesson of how easily 

the world may be taken. There should be many contented spirits 

on board, for such a life is both to travel and to stay at home. 

The chimney smokes for dinner as you go along ; the banks 

of the canal slowly unroll their scenery to contemplative eyes ; 

20 the barge floats by great forests and through great cities with 
their public buildings and their lamps at night; and for the 
bargee, in his floating home, '' traveling abed," it is merely as 
if he were listening to another man's story or turning the leaves 
of a picture book in which he had no concern. He may take his 

25 afternoon walk in some foreign country on the banks of the 
canal, and then come home to dinner at his own fireside. 

There is not enough exercise in such a life for any high meas- 
ure of health ; but a high measure of health is only necessaiy 
for unhealthy people. The slug of a fellow, who is never ill nor 

30 well, has a quiet time of it in life, and dies all the easier. 

I am sure I would rather be a bargee than occupy any posi- 
tion under Heaven that required attendance at an office. There 
are few callings, I should say, where a man gives up less of his 
liberty in return for regular meals. The bargee is on shipboard ; 



ON THE WILLEBROEK CANAL 1 3 

he is master in his own ship ; he can land whenever he will ; he 
can never be kept beating off a lee shore a whole frosty night 
when the sheets are as hard as iron ; and so far as I can make 
out, time stands as nearly still with him as is compatible with 
the return of bedtime or the dinner hour. It is not easy to see 5 
why a bargee should ever die. 

Halfway between Willebroek and Villevorde, in a beautiful 
reach of canal like a squire's avenue, we went ashore to lunch. 
There were two eggs, a junk of bread, and a bottle of wine on 
board the Arcthusa ; and two eggs and an Etna cooking appa- 10 
ratus on board the Cigarette. The master of the latter boat 
smashed one of the eggs in the course of disembarkation ; but 
observing pleasantly that it might still be cooked a la papier, he 
dropped it into the Etna, in its covering of Flemish newspaper. 
We landed in a blink of fine weather ; but we had not been two 1 5 
minutes ashore before the wind freshened into half a gale, and 
the rain began to patter on our shoulders. We sat as close about 
the Etna as we could. The spirits burned with great ostenta- 
tion ; the grass caught flame every minute or two, and had to be 
trodden out ; and before long there were several burnt fingers of 20 
the party. But the solid quantity of cookery accomplished was out 
of proportion with so much display ; and when we desisted, after 
two applications of the fire, the sound egg was a little more than 
loo-warm ; and as for a la papier, it was a cold and sordid /r^V- 
assee of printer's ink and broken eggshell. We made shift to 25 
roast the other two by putting them close to the burning spirits, 
and that with better success. And then we uncorked the bottle 
of wine, and sat down in a ditch with our canoe aprons over our 
knees. It rained smartly. Discomfort, when it is honestly un- 
comfortable and makes no nauseous pretensions to the contrary, 30 
is a vasdy humorous business ; and people well steeped and stupe- 
fied in the open air are in a good vein for laughter. From this 
point of view, even egg a la papier offered by way of food may 
pass muster as a sort of accessory to the fun. But this manner 



14 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of jest, although it may be taken in good part, does not invite 
repetition ; and from that time forward the Etna voyaged like 
a gentleman in the locker of the Cigarette. 

It is almost unnecessary to mention that when lunch was over 

5 and we got aboard again and made sail, the wind promptly died 
away. The rest of the journey to Villevorde we still spread our 
canvas to the unfavoring air, and with now and then a puff, and 
now and then a spell of paddling, drifted along from lock to lock 
between the orderly trees. 

lo It was a fine, green, fat landscape, or rather a mere green 
water lane going on from village to village. Things had a settled 
look, as in places long lived in. Crop-headed children spat upon 
us from the bridges as we went below, with a true conservative 
feeling. But even more conservative were the fishermen, intent 

15 upon their floats, who let us go by without one glance. They 
perched upon sterlings and buttresses and along the slope of the 
embankment, gently occupied. They were indifferent like pieces 
of dead nature. They did not move any more than if they had been 
fishing in an old Dutch print. The leaves fluttered, the water 

20 lapped, but they continued in one stay, like so many churches 
established by law. You might have trepanned every one of their 
innocent heads and found no more than so much coiled fishing 
line below their skulls. I do not care for your stalwart fellows 
in india-rubber stockings breasting up mountain torrents with a 

25^ salmon rod ; but I do dearly love the class of man who plies his 

unfruitful art forever and a day by still and depopulated waters. 

At the lock just beyond Villevorde there was a lock mistress 

who spoke French comprehensibly, and told us we were still a 

couple of leagues from Brussels. At the same place the rain 

30 began again. It fell in straight, parallel lines, and the surface of 
the canal was thrown up into an infinity of little crystal foun- 
tains. There were no beds to be had in the neighborhood. 
Nothing for it but to lay the sails aside and address ourselves 
to steady paddling in the rain. 



ON THE VVILLEBROEK CANAL I 5 

Beautiful country houses, with clocks and long lines of shut- 
tered windows, and fine old trees standing in groves and avenues, 
gave a rich and somber aspect in the rain and the deepening 
dusk to the shores of the canal. I seem to have seen something 
of the same effect in engravings : opulent landscapes, deserted 
and overhung with the passage of storm. And throughout we 
had the escort of a hooded cart, which trotted shabbily along the 
towpath, and kept at an almost uniform distance in our wake. 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 

The rain took off near Laeken. But the sun was already 
down ; the air was chill ; and we had scarcely a dry stitch be- 
tween the pair of us. Nay, now we found ourselves near the 
end of the Alle'e Verte, and on the very threshold of Brussels 
5 we were confronted by a serious difficulty. The shores were 
closely lined by canal boats waiting their turn at the lock. No- 
where was there any convenient landing place ; nowhere so 
much as a stable yard to leave the canoes in for the night. We 
scrambled ashore and entered an estaminet where some sorry 

10 fellows were drinking with the landlord. The landlord was pretty 
round with us ; he knew of no coach house or stable yard, noth- 
ing of the sort ; and seeing we had come with no mind to drink, 
he did not conceal his impatience to be rid of us. One of the 
sorry fellows came to the rescue. Somewhere in the corner of 

15 the basin there was a slip, he informed us, and something else 
besides, not very clearly defined by him, but hopefully construed 
by his hearers. 

Sure enough there was the slip in the corner of the basin ; 
and at the top of it two nice-looking lads in boating clothes. 

20 The AretJmsa addressed himself to these. One of them said 
there would be no difficulty about a night's lodging for our 
boats ; and the other, taking a cigarette from his lips, inquired 
if they were made by Searle & Son. The name was quite an 
introduction. Half a dozen other young men came out of a boat- 

25 house bearing the superscription Royal Sport Nautique, and 
joined in the talk. They were all very polite, voluble, and en- 
thusiastic ; and their discourse was interlarded with English boat- 
ing terms, and the names of English boat builders and English 

16 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 1/ 

dubs. I do not know, to my shame, any spot in my native land, 
where I should have been so warmly received by the same num- 
ber of people. We were English boating men, and the Belgian 
boating men fell upon our necks. I wonder if French Hugue- 
nots were as cordially greeted by English Protestants when they 5 
came across the Channel out of great tribulation. But, after all, 
what religion knits people so closely as common sport ? 

The canoes were carried into the boathouse ; they were washed 
down for us by the club servants, the sails were hung out to dry, 
and everything made as snug and tidy as a picture. And in the lo 
meanwhile we were led upstairs by our new-found brethren, for 
so more than one of them stated the relationship, and made free 
of their lavatory. This one lent us soap, that one a towel, a third 
and fourth helped us to undo our bags. And all the time such 
questions, such assurances of respect and sympathy ! I declare 1 5 
I never knew what glory was before. 

" Yes, yes, the Royal Sport Naiitique is the oldest club in 
Belgium." 

'' We number two hundred." 

" We " — this is not a substantive speech, but an abstract of 20 
many speeches, the impression left upon my mind after a great 
deal of talk ; and very youthful, pleasant, natural, and patriotic 
it seems to me to be — '' we have gained all races, except those 
where we were cheated by the French." 

" You must leave all your wet things to be dried." 25 

'' O ! e?itre freres / In any boathouse in England we should 
find the same." (I cordially hope they might.) 

" En Angleterre, vous employ ez des slidi?ig-seats, ii'est-ce pas ? " 

" We are all employed in commerce during the day ; but in 
the evening, voyez-voiis, nous sonwies serieuxy 30 

These were the words. They were all employed over the 
frivolous mercantile concerns of Belgium during the day ; but 
in the evening they found some hours for the serious concerns 
of life. I may have a wrong idea of wisdom, but I think that 



1 8 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

was a very wise remark. People connected with literature and 
philosophy are busy all their days in getting rid of second-hand 
notions and false standards. It is their profession, in the sweat 
of their brows, by dogged thinking, to recover their old fresh 
5 view of life, and distinguish what they really and originally like 
from what they have only learned to tolerate perforce. And 
these Royal Nautical Sportsmen had the distinction still quite 
legible in their hearts. They had still those clean perceptions of 
what is nice and nasty, what is interesting and what is dull, which 

10 envious old gentlemen refer to as illusions. The nightmare illu- 
sion of middle age, the bear's hug of custom gradually squeez- 
ing the life out of a man's soul, had not yet begun for these 
happy-star'd young Belgians. They still knew that the interest 
they took in their business was a trifling affair compared to their 

15 spontaneous, long-suffering affection for nautical sports. To 
know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what 
the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul 
alive. Such a man may be generous ; he may be honest in some- 
thing more than the commercial sense ; he may love his friends 

20 with an elective, personal sympathy, and not accept them as an 
adjunct of the station to which he has been called. He may be 
a man, in short, acting on his own instincts, keeping in his own 
shape that God made him in ; and not a mere crank in the social 
engine house, welded on principles that he does not understand, 

25 and for purposes that he does not care for. 

For will any one dare to tell me that business is more enter- 
taining than fooling among boats ? He must have never seen a 
.boat, or never seen an office, who says so. And for certain the 
one is a great deal better for the health. There should be noth- 

30 ing so much a man's business as his amusements. Nothing but 
moneygrubbing can be put forward to the contrary ; no one but 

Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From Heaven, 

durst risk a word in answer. It is but a lying cant that would 



THE ROYAL SPORT NAUTIQUE 19 

represent the merchant and the banker as people disinterestedly 
toiling for mankind, and then most useful when they are most 
absorbed in their transactions ; for the man is more important 
than his services. And when my Royal Nautical Sportsman 
shall have so far fallen from his hopeful youth that he cannot 5 
pluck up an enthusiasm over anything but his ledger, I venture 
to doubt whether he will be near so nice a fellow, and whether 
he would welcome, with so good a grace, a couple of drenched 
Englishmen paddling into Brussels in the dusk. 

When we had changed our wet clothes and drunk a glass of 10 
pale ale to the club's prosperity, one of their number escorted 
us to a hotel. He would not join us at our dinner, but he had 
no objection to a glass of wine. Enthusiasm is very wearing; 
and I begin to understand why prophets were unpopular in 
Judea, where they were best known. For three stricken hours 15 
did this excellent young man sit beside us to dilate on boats and 
boat races ; and before he left, he was kind enough to order our 
bedroom candles. 

We endeavored now and again to change the subject ; but 
the diversion did not last a moment : the Royal Nautical Sports- 20 
man bridled, shied, answered the question, and then breasted 
once more into the swelling tide of his subject. I call it his sub- 
ject ; but I think it was he who was subjected. The Arethusa^ 
who holds all racing as a creature of the devil, found himself in 
a pitiful dilemma. He durst not own his ignorance for the honor 25 
of old England, and spoke away about English clubs and Eng- 
lish oarsmen whose fame had never before come to his ears. 
Several times, and once, above all, on the question of sliding 
seats, he was within an ace of exposure. As for the Cigarette, 
who has rowed races in the heat of his blood, but now disowns 30 
these slips of his wanton youth, his case was still more desper- 
ate ; for the Royal Nautical proposed that he should take an oar 
in one of their eights on the morrow, to compare the English 
with the Belgian stroke. I could see my friend perspiring in his 



20 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

chair whenever that particular topic came up. And there was 
yet another proposal which had the same effect on both of us. 
It appeared that the champion canoeist of Europe (as well as 
most other champions) was a Royal Nautical Sportsman. And 
5 if we would only wait until Sunday, this infernal paddler would 
be so condescending as to accompany us on our next stage. 
Neither of us had the least desire to drive the coursers of the 
sun against Apollo. 

When the young man was gone, we countermanded our can- 

lo dies, and ordered some brandy and water. The great billows 
had gone over our head. The Royal Nautical Sportsmen were 
as nice young fellows as a man would wish to see, but they were 
a trifle too young and a thought too nautical for us. We began 
to see that we were old and cynical ; we liked ease and the agree- 

15 able rambling of the human mind about this and the other sub- 
ject ; we did not want to disgrace our native land by messing at 
eight, or toiling pitifully in the wake of the champion canoeist. 
In short, we had recourse to flight. It seemed ungrateful, but 
we tried to make that good on a card loaded with sincere com- 

20 pliments. And indeed it was no time for scruples ; we seemed 
to feel the hot breath of the champion on our necks. 



AT MAUBEUGE 

Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal 
Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than 
fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded 
that we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all. 
Fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount to 5 
trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our 
shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the canal 
side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children. 

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for 
the Arethusa. He is, somehow or other, a marked man for the 10 
official eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gath- 
ered together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers, 
ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru, 
and the union jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under 
these safeguards, portly clergymen, schoolmistresses, gentlemen 1 5 
in gray tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British tour- 
istry pour unhindered, "Murray" in hand, over the railways of the 
Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in 
the meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If 
he travels, without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about 20 
the matter, into noisome dungeons : if his papers are in order, 
he is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been 
humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a born British sub- 
ject, yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official 
of his nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; 25 
yet he is rarely known for anything better than a spy, and there 
is no absurd and disreputable means of livelihood but has been 
attributed to him in some heat of official or popular distrust. . . . 



22 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

For the life of me I cannot understand it. I, too, have been 
knolled to church and sat at good men's feasts, but I bear no 
mark of it. I am as strange as a Jack Indian to their official 
spectacles. I might come from any part of the globe, it seems, 
5 except from where I do. My ancestors have labored in vain, 
and the glorious Constitution cannot protect me in my walks 
abroad. It is a great thing, believe me, to present a good nor- 
mal type of the nation you belong to. 

Nobody else was asked for his papers on the way to Mau- 

10 beuge, but I was ; and although I clung to my rights, I had to 
choose at last between accepting the humiliation and being left 
behind by the train. I was sorry to give way, but I wanted to 
get to Maubeuge. 

Maubeuge is a fortified town with a very good inn, the G?'and 

15 Cerf. It seemed to be inhabited principally by soldiers and bag- 
men ; at least, these were all that we saw except the hotel servants. 
We had to stay there some time, for the canoes were in no hurry 
to follow us, and at last stuck hopelessly in the customhouse 
until we went back to liberate them. There was nothing to do, 

20 nothing to see. We had good meals, which was a great matter, 
but that was all. 

The Cigarette was nearly taken up upon a charge of drawing 
the fortifications : a feat of which he was hopelessly incapable. 
And besides, as I suppose each belligerent nation has a plan of 

25 the other's fortified places already, these precautions are of the 
nature of shutting the stable door after the steed is away. But 
I have no doubt they help to keep up a good spirit at home. It 
is a great thing if you can persuade people that they are some- 
how or other partakers in a mystery. It makes them feel big- 

30 ger. Even the Freemasons, who have been shown up to satiety, 
preserve a kind of pride ; and not a grocer among them, how- 
ever honest, harmless, and empty-headed he may feel himself to 
be at bottom, but comes home from one of their ce7iacida with 
a portentous significance for himself. 



AT MAUBEUGE 23 

It is an odd thing how happily two people, if there are two, 
can live in a place where they have no acquaintance. I think 
the spectacle of a whole life in which you have no part paralyzes 
personal desire. You are content to become a mere spectator. 
The baker stands in his door ; the colonel with his three medals 5 
goes by to the cafe at night ; the troops drum and trumpet and 
man the ramparts as bold as so many lions. It would task lan- 
guage to say how placidly you behold all this. In a place where 
you have taken some root you are provoked out of your indif- 
ference ; you have a hand in the game, — your friends are fight- 10 
ing with the army. But in a strange town, not small enough to 
grow too soon familiar, nor so large as to have laid itself out for 
travelers, you stand so far apart from the business that you 
positively forget it would be possible to go nearer ; you have so 
little human interest around you that you do not remember your- 1 5 
self to be a man. Perhaps in a very short time you would be 
one no longer. Gymnosophists go into a wood with all nature 
seething around them, with romance on every side ; it would be 
much more to the purpose if they took up their abode in a dull 
country town where they should see just so much of humanity 20 
as to keep them from desiring more, and only the stale exter- 
nals of man's life. These externals are as dead to us as so many 
formalities, and speak a dead language in our eyes and ears. 
They have no more meaning than an oath or a salutation. We 
are so much accustomed to see married couples going to church 25 
of a Sunday that we have clean forgotten what they represent ; 
and novelists are driven to rehabilitate adultery, no less, when 
they wish to show us what a beautiful thing it is for a man and 
a woman to live for each other. 

One person in Maubeuge, however, showed me something 30 
more than his outside. That was the driver of the hotel omni- 
bus : a mean enough looking little man, as well as I can remem- 
ber, but with a spark of something human in his soul. He had 
heard of our little journey, and came to me at once in envious 



24 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

sympathy. How he longed to travel ! he told me. How he 
longed to be somewhere else, and see the round world before 
he went into the grave ! " Here I am," said he. " I drive to 
the station. Well. And then I drive back again to the hotel. 

5 And so on every day and all the week round. My God, is that 
life ? " I could not say I thought it was — for him. He pressed 
me to tell him where I had been, and where I hoped to go ; and 
as he listened, I declare the fellow sighed. Might not this have 
been a brave African traveler, or gone to the Indies after 

lo Drake ? But it is an evil age for the gypsily inclined among 
men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is 
who has the wealth and glory. 

I wonder if my friend is still driving the omnibus for the 
Grand Cerf? Not very likely, I believe ; for I think he was on 

15 the eve of mutiny when we passed through, and perhaps our 
passage determined him for good. Better a thousand times that 
he should be a tramp, and mend pots and pans by the wayside, 
and sleep under trees, and see the dawn and the sunset every 
day above a new horizon. I think I hear you say that it is a 

20 respectable position to drive an omnibus ? Very well. What 
right has he who likes it not to keep those who would like it 
dearly out of this respectable position ? Suppose a dish were not 
to my taste, and you told me that it was a favorite among the 
rest of the company, what should I conclude from that ? Not 

25 to finish the dish against my stomach, I suppose. 

Respectability is a very good thing in its way, but it does not 
rise superior to all considerations. I would not for a moment 
venture to hint that it was a matter of taste ; but I think I will 
go as far as this : that if a position is admittedly unkind, uncom- 

30 fortable, unnecessary, and superfluously useless, although it were 
as respectable as the Church of England, the sooner a man is 
out of it, the better for himself, and all concerned. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
TO QUARTES 

About three in the afternoon the whole establishment of the 
Grand Cerf accompanied us to the water's edge. The man of 
the omnibus was there with haggard eyes. Poor cage bird ! Do 
I not remember the time when I myself haunted the station, to 
watch train after train carry its complement of freemen into the 5 
night, and read the names of distant places on the time-bills with 
indescribable longings ? 

We were not clear of the fortifications before the rain began. 
The wind was contrary, and blew in furious gusts ; nor were the 
aspects of nature any more clement than the doings of the sky. 10 
For we passed through a blighted country, sparsely covered with 
brush, but handsomely enough diversified with factory chimneys. 
We landed in a soiled meadow among some pollards, and there 
smoked a pipe in a flaw of fair weather. But the wind blew so 
hard we could get little else to smoke. There were no natural 15 
objects in the neighborhood, but some sordid workshops. A 
group of children, headed by a tall girl, stood and watched us 
from a little distance all the time we stayed. I heartily wonder 
what they thought of us. 

At Hautmont, the lock was almost impassable ; the landing 20 
place being steep and high, and the launch at a long distance. 
Near a dozen grimy workmen lent us a hand. They refused any 
reward ; and, what is much better, refused it handsomely, with- 
out conveying any sense of insult. " It is a way we have in our 
countryside," said they. And a very becoming way it is. In 25 
Scotland, where also you will get services for nothing, the good 
people reject your money as if you had been trying to corrupt 

25 



26 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

a voter. When people take the trouble to do dignified acts, it is 
worth while to take a little more, and allow the dignity to be 
common to all concerned. But in our brave Saxon countries, 
where we plod threescore years and ten in the mud, and the 
5 wind keeps singing in our ears from birth to burial, we do our 
good and bad with a high hand and almost offensively ; and make 
even our alms a witness-bearing and an act of war against the 
wrong. 

After Hautmont, the sun came forth again and the wind went 

lo down ; and a little paddling took us beyond the iron works and 
through a delectable land. The river wound among low hills, so 
that sometimes the sun was at our backs and sometimes it stood 
right ahead, and the river before us was one sheet of intolerable 
glory. On either hand meadows and orchards bordered, with a 

1 5 margin of sedge and water flowers, upon the river. The hedges 
were of great height, woven about the trunks of hedgerow elms ; 
and the fields, as they were often very small, looked like a series 
of bowers along the stream. There was never any prospect ; 
sometimes a hilltop with its trees would look over the nearest 

2o hedgerow, just to make a middle distance for the sky ; but that 
was all. The heaven was bare of clouds. The atmosphere, after 
the rain, was of enchanting purity. The river doubled among 
the hillocks, a shining strip of mirror glass ; and the dip of the 
paddles set the flowers shaking along the brink. 

25 In the meadows wandered black-and-white cattle fantastically 
marked. One beast, with a white head and the rest of the body 
glossy black, came to the edge to drink, and stood gravely twitch- 
ing his ears at me as I went by, like some sort of preposterous 
clergyman in a play. A moment after I heard a loud plunge, 

30 and, turning my head, saw the clergyman struggling to shore. 
The bank had given way under his feet. 

Besides the cattle, we saw no living things except a few birds 
and a great many fishermen. These sat along the edges of the 
meadows, sometimes with one rod, sometimes with as many as 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 2/ 

half a score. They seemed stupefied with contentment ; and, 
when we induced them to exchange a few words with us about 
the weather, their voices sounded quiet and far away. There 
was a strange diversity of opinion among them as to the kind of 
fish for which they set their lures ; although they were all agreed 5 
in this, that the river was abundantly supplied. Where it was 
plain that no two of them had ever caught the same kind of fish, 
we could not help suspecting that perhaps not any one of them 
had ever caught a fish at all. I hope, since the afternoon was 
so lovely, that they were one and all rewarded ; and that a silver ^o 
booty went home in every basket for the pot. Some of my friends 
would cry shame on me for this, but I prefer a man, were he 
only an angler, to the bravest pair of gills in all God's waters. 
I do not affect fishes unless when cooked in sauce ; whereas an 
angler is an important piece of river scenery, and hence deserves ^ 5 
some recognition among canoeists. He can always tell you where 
you are, after a mild fashion ; and his quiet presence serves to 
accentuate the solitude and stillness, and remind you of the 
glittering citizens below your boat. 

The Sambre turned so industriously to and fro among his little ~o 
hills that it was past six before we drew near the lock at Quartes. 
There were some children on the towpath, with whom the Ciga- 
rette fell into a chaffing talk as they ran along beside us. It was 
in vain that I warned him. In vain I told him in English that 
boys were the most dangerous creatures ; and if once you began 25 
with them, it was safe to end in a shower of stones. For my 
own part, whenever anything was addressed to me, I smiled 
gently and shook my head, as though I were an inoffensive 
person inadequately acquainted with French. For, indeed, I 
have had such an experience at home that I would sooner meet 30 
many wild animals than a troop of healthy urchins. 

But I was doing injustice to these peaceable young Hainau- 
ters. When the Cigarette went off to make inquiries, I got out 
upon the bank to smoke a pipe and superintend the boats, and 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

became at once the center of much amiable curiosity. The chil- 
dren had been joined by this time by a young woman and a mild 
lad who had lost an arm ; and this gave me more security. When 
I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her 
5 head with a comical grown-up air. " Ah, you see," she said, " he 
understands well enough now : he was just making believe." 
And the little group laughed together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they heard we came from 

England ; and the little girl proffered the information that Eng- 

10 land was an island '' and a far way from here — bien loin dHciP 

" Aye, you may say that, a far way from here," said the lad 

with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my life ; they 
seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the place 
15 where I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one 
piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy of record. 
They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with 
petitions for a sail ; aye, and they deafened us to the same tune 
20 next morning when we came to start ; but then, when the canoes 
were lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. Deli- 
cacy ? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel ? 
I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil ; unless 
perhaps, the two were the same thing.? And yet 'tis a good 
25 tonic ; the cold tub and bath towel of sentiments ; and positively 
necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not 
make enough of my red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
awe. 
30 '' They make them like that in England," said the boy with 
one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we make them 
in England nowadays. '' They are for people who go away to 
sea," he added, " and to defend one's life against great fish." 
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 29 

little group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even 
my pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay, pretty well 
" trousered," as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as 
a thing coming from so far away. And if my feathers were not 
very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas. One thing 5 
in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness ; and 
that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I suppose 
they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The 
little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own 
sabots in competition ; and I wish you could have seen how 10 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk can, a great amphora of hammered 
brass, stood some w^ay off upon the sward. I was glad of an 
opportunity to divert public attention from myself and return 
some of the compliments I had received. So I admired it cor- 1 5 
dially both for form and color, telling them, and very truly, that 
it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. The things 
were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the children ex- 
patiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell some- 
times as high as thirty francs apiece ; told me how they were 20 
carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave 
caparison in themselves ; and how they were to be seen all over 
the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of 
great size. 



28 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

became at once the center of much amiable curiosity. The chil- 
dren had been joined by this time by a young woman and a mild 
lad who had lost an arm ; and this gave me more security. When 
I let slip my first word or so in French, a little girl nodded her 
5 head with a comical grown-up air. " Ah, you see," she said, " he 
understands well enough now : he was just making believe." 
And the little group laughed together very good-naturedly. 

They were much impressed when they heard we came from 

England ; and the little girl proffered the information that Eng- 

10 land was an island " and a far way from here — bien loi?i d^ici.^^ 

" Aye, you may say that, a far way from here," said the lad 

with one arm. 

I was nearly as homesick as ever I was in my life ; they 
seemed to make it such an incalculable distance to the place 
15 where I first saw the day. 

They admired the canoes very much. And I observed one 
piece of delicacy in these children which is worthy of record. 
They had been deafening us for the last hundred yards with 
petitions for a sail ; aye, and they deafened us to the same tune 
20 next morning when we came to start ; but then, when the canoes 
were lying empty, there was no word of any such petition. Deli- 
cacy ? or perhaps a bit of fear for the water in so crank a vessel ? 
I hate cynicism a great deal worse than I do the devil ; unless 
perhaps, the two were the same thing ? And yet 't is a good 
25 tonic ; the cold tub and bath towel of sentiments ; and positively 
necessary to life in cases of advanced sensibility. 

From the boats they turned to my costume. They could not 
make enough of my red sash ; and my knife filled them with 
awe. 
30 '' They make them like that in England," said the boy with 
one arm. I was glad he did not know how badly we make them 
in England nowadays. '' They are for people who go away to 
sea," he added, " and to defend one's life against great fish." 
I felt I was becoming a more and more romantic figure to the 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 29 

little group at every word. And so I suppose I was. Even 
my pipe, although it was an ordinary French clay, pretty well 
" trousered," as they call it, would have a rarity in their eyes, as 
a thing coming from so far away. And if my feathers were not 
very fine in themselves, they were all from over seas. One thing 5 
in my outfit, however, tickled them out of all politeness ; and 
that was the bemired condition of my canvas shoes. I suppose 
they were sure the mud at any rate was a home product. The 
little girl (who was the genius of the party) displayed her own 
sabots in competition ; and I wish you could have seen how 10 
gracefully and merrily she did it. 

The young woman's milk can, a great amphora of hammered 
brass, stood some way off upon the sward. I was glad of an 
opportunity to divert public attention from myself and return 
some of the compliments I had received. So I admired it cor- 15 
dially both for form and color, telling them, and very truly, that 
it was as beautiful as gold. They were not surprised. The things 
were plainly the boast of the countryside. And the children ex- 
patiated on the costliness of these amphorae, which sell some- 
times as high as thirty francs apiece ; told me how they were 20 
carried on donkeys, one on either side of the saddle, a brave 
caparison in themselves ; and how they were to be seen all over 
the district, and at the larger farms in great number and of 
great size. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 

WE ARE PEDDLERS 

The Ciga7'ette returned with good news. There were beds to 
be had some ten minutes' walk from where we were, at a place 
called Pont. We stowed the canoes in a granary, and asked 
among the children for a guide. The circle at once widened 
5 round us, and our offers of reward were received in dispiriting 
silence. We were plainly a pair of Bluebeards to the children ; 
they might speak to us in public places, and where they had the 
advantage of numbers ; but it was another thing to venture off 
alone with two uncouth and legendary characters, who had 

lo dropped from the clouds upon their hamlet this quiet after- 
noon, sashed and beknifed, and with a flavor of great voyages. 
The owner of the granary came to our assistance, singled out 
one little fellow, and threatened him with corporalities ; or I sus- 
pect we should h^ve had to find the way for ourselves. As it 

15 was, he was more frightened at the granary man than the 
strangers, having perhaps had some experience of the former. 
But I fancy his little heart must have been going at a fine rate, 
for he kept trotting at a respectful distance in front, and look- 
ing back at us with scared eyes. Not otherwise may the chil- 

20 dren of the young world have guided Jove or one of his Olympian 
compeers on an adventure. 

A miry lane led us up from Quartes, with its church and bick- 
ering windmill. The hinds were trudging homewards from the 
' fields. A brisk little old woman passed us by. She was seated 

25 across a donkey between a pair of glittering milk cans, and, as 
she went, she kicked jauntily with her heels upon the donkey's 
side, and scattered shrill remarks among the wayfarers. It was 

30 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 3 1 

notable that none of the tired men took the trouble to reply. 
Our conductor soon led us out of the lane and across country. 
The sun had gone down, but the west in front of us was one 
lake of level gold. The path wandered awhile in the open, and 
then passed under a trellis like a bower indefinitely prolonged. 5 
On either hand were shadowy orchards ; cottages lay low among 
the leaves and sent their smoke to heaven ; every here and there, 
in an opening, appeared the great gold face of the west. 

I never saw the Cigai-ette in such an idyllic frame of mind. 
He waxed positively lyrical in praise of country scenes. I was 10 
little less exhilarated myself ; the mild air of the evening, the 
shadows, the rich lights, and the silence made a symphonious 
accompaniment about our walk ; and we both determined to 
avoid towns for the future and sleep in hamlets. 

At last the path went between two houses, and turned the 15 
party out into a wide, muddy highroad, bordered, as far as the 
eye could reach on either hand, by an unsightly village. The 
houses stood well back, leaving a ribbon of waste land on either 
side of the road, where there were stacks of firewood, carts, bar- 
rows, rubbish heaps, and a little doubtful grass. Away on the 20 
left, a gaunt tower stood in the middle of the street. What it 
had been in past ages I know not : probably a hold in time of 
war; but nowadays it bore an illegible dial plate in its upper 
parts, and near the bottom an iron letter box. 

The inn to which we had been recommended at Quartes was 25 
full, or else the landlady did not like our looks. I ought to say, 
that with our long, damp india-rubber bags, we presented rather 
a doubtful type of civilization : like rag-and-bone men, the Ciga- 
rette imagined. " These gentlerhen are peddlers } — Ces messieurs 
sont des marchands ? " — asked the landlady. And then, without 30 
waiting for an answer, which I suppose she thought superfluous 
in so plain a case, recommended us to a butcher who lived hard 
by the tower and took in travelers to lodge. 

Thither went we. But the butcher was flitting, and all his 



32 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

beds were taken down. Or else he did n't like our looks. As a 
parting shot, we had, " These gentlemen are peddlers .? " 

It began to grow dark in earnest. We could no longer dis- 
tinguish the faces of the people who passed us by with an in- 
5 articulate good evening. And the householders of Pont seemed 
very economical with their oil, for we saw not a single window 
lighted in all that long village. I believe it is the longest village 
in the world ; but I dare say in our predicament every pace 
counted three times over. We were much cast down when we 

lo came to the last auberge, and, looking in at the dark door, asked 
timidly if we could sleep there for the night. A female voice as- 
sented, in no very friendly tones. We clapped the bags down 
and found our way to chairs. 

The place was in total darkness, save a red glow in the chinks 

15 and ventilators of the stove. But now the landlady lit a lamp to 
see her new guests ; I suppose the darkness was what saved us 
another expulsion, for I cannot say she looked gratified at our 
appearance. We were in a large, bare apartment, adorned with 
two allegorical prints of Music and Painting, and a copy of the 

20 Law against Public Drunkenness. On one side there was a bit 
of a bar, with some half a dozen bottles. Two laborers sat wait- 
ing supper, in attitudes of extreme weariness ; a plain-looking 
lass bustled about with a sleepy child of two, and the landlady 
began to derange the pots upon the stove and set some beefsteak 

25 to grill. 

" These gentlemen are peddlers ? " she asked sharply ; and 
that was all the conversation forthcoming. We began to think 
we might be peddlers, after all. I never knew a population with 
so narrow a range of conjecture as the innkeepers of Pont-sur- 

30 Sambre. But manners and bearing have not a wider currency 
than bank notes. You have only to get far enough out of your 
beat, and all your accomplished airs will go for nothing. These 
Hainauters could see no difference between us and the average 
peddler. Indeed, we had some grounds for reflection while the 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 33 

Steak was getting ready, to see how perfectly they accepted us 
at their own valuation, and how our best politeness and best 
efforts at entertainment seemed to fit quite suitably with the 
character of packmen. At least it seemed a good account of the 
profession in France, that even before such judges we could not 5 
beat them at our own weapons. 

At last we were called to table. The two hinds (and one of 
them looked sadly worn and white in the face, as though sick 
with overwork and underfeeding) supped off a single plate of 
some sort of bread-berry, some potatoes in their jackets, a small 10 
cup of coffee sweetened with sugar candy, and one tumbler of 
swipes. The landlady, her son, and the lass aforesaid took the 
same. Our meal was quite a banquet by comparison. We had 
some beefsteak, not so tender as it might have been, some of 
the potatoes, some cheese, an extra glass of the swipes, and 15 
white sugar in our coffee. 

You see what it is to be a gentleman, — I beg your pardon, 
what it is to be a peddler. It had not before occurred to me that 
a peddler was a great man in a laborer's alehouse ; but now that 
I had to enact the part for the evening, I found that so it was. 20 
He has in his hedge quarters somewhat the same preeminency 
as the man who takes a private parlor in a hotel. The more you 
look into it the more infinite are the class distinctions among 
men ; and possibly, by a happy dispensation there is no one at 
all at the bottom of the scale ; no one but can find some superi- 25 
ority over somebody else, to keep up his pride withal. 

We were displeased enough with our fare. Particularly the 
Cigarette ; for I tried to make believe that I was amused with 
the adventure, tough beefsteak and all. According to the Lucre- 
tian maxim, our steak should have been flavored by the look of 30 
the other people's bread-berr}^ ; but we did not find it so in prac- 
tice. You may have a head knowledge that other people live 
more poorly than yourself, but it is not agreeable — I was going 
to say, it is against the etiquette of the universe — to sit at the 



34 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

same table and pick your own superior diet from among their 
crusts. I had not seen such a thing done since the greedy boy 
at school with his birthday cake. It was odious enough to wit- 
ness, I could remember ; and I had never thought to play the 
5 part myself. But there, again, you see what it is to be a peddler. 
There is no doubt that the poorer classes in our country are 
much more charitably disposed than their superiors in wealth. 
And I fancy it must arise a great deal from the comparative 
indistinction of the easy and the not so easy in these ranks. A 

lo workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less 
comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury, he must 
do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more 
directly lead to charitable thoughts ? . . . Thus the poor man, 
camping out in life, sees it as it is, and knows that every mouth- 

15 ful he puts in his belly has been wrenched out of the fingers of 
the hungry. 

But at a certain stage of prosperity, as in a balloon ascent, the 
fortunate person passes through a zone of clouds, and sublunary 
matters are thenceforward hidden from his view. He sees nothing 

20 but the heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as 
good as new. He finds himself surrounded in the most touch- 
ing manner by the attentions of Providence, and compares him- 
self involuntarily with the lilies and the skylarks. He does not 
precisely sing, of course ; but then he looks so unassuming in 

25 his open Landau ! If all the world dined at one table, this phi- 
losophy would meet with some rude knocks. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 
THE TRAVELING MERCHANT 

Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce, when the true nobleman 
broke in on their high life below stairs, we were destined to be 
confronted with a real peddler. To make the lesson still more 
poignant for fallen gentlemen like us, he was a peddler of infi- 
nitely more consideration than the sort of scurvy fellows we 5 
were taken for ; like a lion among mice, or a ship of war bear- 
ing down upon two cockboats. Indeed, he did not desei"ve the 
name of peddler at all ; he was a traveling merchant. 

I suppose it was about half-past eight when this worthy, Mon- 
sieur Hector Gilliard, of Maubeuge, turned up at the alehouse 10 
door in a tilt cart drawn by a donkey, and cried cheerily on the 
inhabitants. He was a lean, nervous flibbertigibbet of a man, 
with something the look of an actor and something the look of 
a horse jockey. He had evidently prospered without any of the 
favors of education, for he adhered with stem simplicity to 15 
the masculine gender, and in the course of the evening passed 
off some fancy futures in a very florid style of architecture. 
With him came his wife, a comely young woman, with her 
hair tied in a yellow kerchief, and their son, a little fellow of 
four, in a blouse and military kepi. It was notable that the child 20 
was many degrees better dressed than either of the parents. We 
were informed he was already at a boarding school; but the 
holidays having just commenced, he was off to spend them with 
his parents on a cruise. An enchanting holiday occupation, was 
it not ? to travel all day with father and mother in the tilt cart 25 
full of countless treasures ; the green country rattling by on 
either side, and the children in all the villages contemplating him 

35 



36 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

with envy and wonder. It is better fun, during the holidays, 
to be the son of a traveling merchant, than son and heir 
to the greatest cotton spinner in creation. And as for being 
a reigning prince, — indeed, I never saw one if it was not 
5 Master Gilliard ! 

While M. Hector and the son of the house were putting up 
the donkey and getting all the valuables under lock and key, the 
landlady warmed up the remains of our beefsteak and fried the 
cold potatoes in slices, and Madame Gilliard set herself to waken 

lo the boy, who had come far that day, and was peevish and daz- 
zled by the light. He was no sooner awake than he began to 
prepare himself for supper by eating galette, unripe pears, and 
cold potatoes, with, so far as I could judge, positive benefit to 
his appetite. 

15 The landlady, fired with motherly emulation, awoke her own 
little girl, and the two children were confronted. Master Gilliard 
looked at her for a moment, very much as a dog looks at his 
own reflection in a mirror before he turns away. He was at 
that time absorbed in the galette. His mother seemed crest- 

20 fallen that he should display so little inclination towards the 
other s^x, and expressed her disappointment with some candor 
and a very proper reference to the influence of years. 

Sure enough a time will come when he will pay more atten- 
tion to the girls, and think a great deal less of his mother ; let 

25 us hope she will like it as well as she seemed to fancy. But it 
is odd enough ; the very women who profess most contempt for 
mankind as a sex seem to find even its ugliest particulars rather 
lively and high-minded in their own sons. 

The little girl looked longer and with more interest, probably 

30 because she was in her own house, wjiile he was a traveler 
and accustomed to strange sights. And, besides, there was no 
galette in the case with her. 

All the time of supper there was nothing spoken of but my 
young lord. The two parents were both absurdly fond of their 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 37 

child. Monsieur kept insisting on his sagacity ; how he knew 
all the children at school by name, and when this utterly failed 
on trial, how he was cautious and exact to a strange degree, and 
if asked anything, he would sit and think — and think, and if he 
did not know it, " my faith, he would n't tell you at all — mafoi, 5 
// lie vous le dira pasJ^ Which is certainly a very high degree of 
caution. At intervals, M. Hector would appeal to his wife, with 
his mouth full of beefsteak, as to the little fellow's age at such 
or such a time when he had said or done something memorable ; 
and I noticed that Madame usually pooh-poohed these inquiries. 10 
She herself was not boastful in her vein ; but she never had her 
fill of caressing the child ; and she seemed to take a gentle pleas- 
ure in recalling all that was fortunate in his little existence. No 
schoolboy could have talked more of the holidays which were 
just beginning and less of the black schooltinie which must in- 15 
evitably follow after. She showed, -with a pride perhaps partly 
mercantile in origin, his pockets preposterously swollen with tops, 
and whistles, and string. When she called at a house in the way 
of business, it appeared he kept her company ; and, whenever 
a sale was made, received a sou out of the profit. Indeed, they 20 
spoiled him vastly, these two good people. But they had an eye 
to his manners, for all that, and reproved him for some little 
faults in breeding which occurred from time to time during 
supper. 

On the whole, I was not much hurt at being taken for a 25 
peddler. I might think that I ate with greater delicacy, or that 
my mistakes in French belonged to a different order ; but it was 
plain that these distinctions would be thrown away upon the 
landlady and the two laborers. In all essential things we and 
the Gilliards cut very much the same figure in the alehouse 30 
kitchen. M. Hector was more at home, indeed, and took a 
higher tone with the world ; but that was explicable on the 
ground of his driving a donkey cart, while we poor bodies 
tramped afoot. I dare say the rest of the company thought us 



38 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dying with envy, though in no ill sense, to be as far up in the 
profession as the new arrival. 

And of one thing I am sure ; that every one thawed and be- 
came more humanized and conversable as soon as these innocent 
5 people appeared upon the scene. I would not very readily trust 
the traveling merchant with any extravagant sum of money, but 
I am sure his heart was in the right place. In this mixed world, 
if you can find one or two sensible places in a man ; above all, 
if you should find a whole family living together on such pleas- 

lo ant terms, you may surely be satisfied, and take the rest for 
granted ; or, what is a great deal better, boldly make up your 
mind that you can do perfectly well without the rest, and that 
ten thousand bad traits cannot 'make a single good one any 
the less good. 

15 It was getting late. M. Hector lit a stable lantern and went 
off to his cart for some arrangements, and my young gentleman 
proceeded to divest himself of the better part of his raiment and 
play gymnastics on his mother's lap, and thence on to the floor, 
with accompaniment of laughter. 

20 " Are you going to sleep alone ? " asked the servant lass. 
" There 's little fear of that," says Master Gilliard. 
" You sleep alone at school," objected his mother. " Come, 
come, you must be a man." 

But he protested that school was a different matter from the 

25 holidays ; that there were dormitories at school, and silenced the 
discussion with kisses, his mother smiling, no one better pleased 
than she. 

There certainly was, as he phrased it, very little fear that he 
should sleep alone, for there was but one bed for the trio. We, 

30 on our part, had firmly protested against one man's accommoda- 
tion for two ; and we had a double-bedded pen in the loft of the 
house, furnished, beside the beds, with exactly three hat pegs 
and one table. There was not so much as a glass of water. But 
the window would open, by good fortune. 



PONT-SUR-SAMBRE 39 

Some time before I fell asleep the loft was full of the sound 
of mighty snoring ; the Gilliards, and the laborers, and the peo- 
ple of the inn, all at it, I suppose, with one consent. The young 
moon outside shone very clearly over Pont-sur-Sambre, and down 
upon the alehouse where all we peddlers were abed. 5 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 
TO LANDRECIES 

In the morning, when we came downstairs the landlady 
pointed out to us two pails of water behind the street door. 
" Voiid de I ^eaii pour voiis debarbouiller,^^ says she. And so 
there we made a shift to wash ourselves, while Madame Gil- 

5 Hard brushed the family boots on the outer doorstep, and M. 
Hector, whistling cheerily, arranged some small goods for the 
day's campaign in a portable chest of drawers, which formed a 
part of his baggage. Meanwhile the child was letting off Water- 
loo crackers all over the floor. 

lo I wonder, by the way, what they call Waterloo crackers in 
France ; perhaps Austerlitz crackers. There is a great deal in 
the point of view. Do you remember the Frenchman who, 
traveling by way of Southampton, was put down in Waterloo 
Station, and had to drive across Waterloo Bridge ? He had a 

15 mind to go home again, it seems. 

Pont itself is on the river, but whereas it is ten minutes' walk 
from Quartes by dry land, it is six weary kilometers by water. 
We left our bags at the inn and walked to our canoes through 
the wet orchards unencumbered. Some of the children were 

20 there to see us off, but we were no longer the mysterious beings 
of the night before. A departure is much less romantic than an 
unexplained arrival in the golden evening. Although we might 
be greatly taken at a ghost's first appearance, we should behold 
him vanish with comparative equanimity. 

25 The good folks of the inn at Pont, when we called there for 
the bags, were overcome with marveling. At the sight of these 
two dainty little boats, with a fluttering union jack on each, and 

40 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 4 1 

all the varnish shining from the sponge, they began to perceive 
that they had entertained angels unawares. The landlady stood 
upon the bridge, probably lamenting she had charged so little ; 
the son ran to and fro, and called out the neighbors to enjoy 
the sight ; and we paddled away from quite a crowd of rapt 5 
observers. These gentleman peddlers, indeed ! Now you see 
their quality too late. 

The whole day was showery, with occasional drenching 
plumps. We were soaked to the skin, then partially dried in 
the sun, then soaked once more. But there were some calm 10 
intervals, and one notably, when we were skirting the forest of 
Mormal, a sinister name to the ear, but a place most gratifying 
to sight and smell. It looked solemn along the riverside, droop- 
ing its boughs into the water, and piling them up aloft into a 
wall of leaves. What is a forest but a city of nature's own, full 1 5 
of hardy and innocuous living things, where there is nothing 
dead and nothing made with the hands, but the citizens them- 
selves are the houses and public monuments ? There is nothing 
so much alive and yet so quiet as a woodland ; and a pair of 
people, swinging past in canoes, feel very small and bustling 20 
by comparison. 

And, surely, of all smells in the world the smell of many trees 
is the sweetest and most fortifying. The sea has a rude pistol- 
ing sort of odor, and takes you in the nostrils like snuff, and 
carries with it a fine sentiment of open water and tall ships ; but 25 
the smell of a forest, which comes nearest to this in tonic quality, 
surpasses it by many degrees in the quality of softness. Again, 
the smell of the sea has little variety, but the smell of a forest is 
infinitely changeful ; it varies with the hour of the day, not in 
strength merely, but in character ; and the different sorts of 30 
trees, as you go from one zone of the wood to another, seem 
to live among different kinds of atmosphere. Usually the rosin 
of the fir predominates. But some woods are more coquettish 
in their habits ; and the breath of the forest Mormal, as it came 



42 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

aboard upon us that showery afternoon, was perfumed with 
nothing less delicate than sweetbrier. 

I wish our way had always lain among woods. Trees are the 
most civil society. An old oak that has been growing where he 
5 stands since before the Reformation, taller than many spires, 
more stately than the greater part of mountains, and yet a liv- 
ing thing, liable to sicknesses and death, like you and me : is not 
that in itself a speaking lesson in history ? But acres on acres 
full of such patriarchs contiguously rooted, their green tops bil- 

lo lowing in the wind, their stalwart younglings pushing up about 
their knees ; a whole forest, healthy and beautiful, giving color 
to the light, giving perfume to the air ; what is this but the most 
imposing piece in nature's repertory ? Heine wished to lie like 
Merlin under the oaks of Broceliande. I should not be satisfied 

1 5 with one tree ; but if the wood grew together like a banyan grove, 
I would be buried under the tap root of the whole ; my parts 
should circulate from oak to oak ; and my consciousness should 
be diffused abroad in all the forest, and give a common heart to 
that assembly of green spires, so that it, also, might rejoice in its 

20 own loveliness and dignity. I think I feel a thousand squirrels 
leaping from bough to bough in my vast mausoleum ; and the 
birds and the winds merrily coursing over its uneven, leafy 
surface. 

Alas ! the forest of Mormal is only a little bit of a wood, and 

25 it was but for a little way that we skirted by its boundaries. And 
the rest of the time the rain kept coming in squirts and the wind 
in squalls, until one's heart grew weary of such fitful, scolding 
weather. It was odd how the showers began when we had to 
carry the boats over a lock and must expose our legs. They 

30 always did. This is a sort of thing that readily begets a personal 
feeling against nature. There seems no reason why the shower 
should not come five minutes before or five minutes after, unless 
you suppose an intention to affront you. The Cigarette had a 
mackintosh which put him more or less above their contrarieties. 



ON THE SAMBRE CANALIZED 43 

But I had to bear the brunt uncovered. I began to remember 
that nature was a woman. My companion, in a rosier temper, 
listened with great satisfaction to my jeremiads, and ironically 
concurred. He instanced, as a cognate matter, the action of the 
tides, '' which," said he, " was altogether designed for the con- 5 
fusion of canoeists, except in so far as it was calculated to min- 
ister to a barren vanity on the part of the moon." 

At the last lock, some little way out of Landrecies, I refused 
to go any farther ; and sat in a drift of rain by the side of the 
bank, to have a reviving pipe. A vivacious old man, whom I 10 
took to have been the devil, drew near, and questioned me about 
our journey. In the fullness of my heart I laid bare our plans 
before him. He said it was the silliest enterprise that ever he 
heard of. Why, did I not know, he asked me, that it was 
nothing but locks, locks, locks, the whole way ? not to mention 1 5 
that, at this season of the year, we would find the Oise quite 
dry .? " Get into a train, my little young man," said he, " and go 
you away home to your parents." I was so astounded at the 
man's malice that I could only stare at him in silence. A tree 
would never have spoken to me like this. At last I got out with 20 
some words. We had come from Antwerp already, I told him, 
which was a good long way ; and we should do the rest in spite 
of him. Yes, I said, if there were no other reason, I would do 
it now, just because he had dared to say we could not. The 
pleasant old gentleman looked at me sneeringly, made an allusion 25 
to my canoe, and marched off, wagging his head. 

I was still inwardly fuming when up came a pair of young 
fellows, who imagined I was the Cigarette^s servant, on a com- 
parison, I suppose, of my bare jersey with the other's mackin- 
tosh, and asked me many questions about my place and my 30 
master's character. I said he was a good enough fellow, but 
had this absurd voyage on the head. " Oh, no, no," said one, 
'' you must not say that ; it is not absurd ; it is very courageous 
of him." I believe these were a couple of angels sent to give me 



44 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

heart again. It was truly fortifying to reproduce all the old man's 
insinuations, as if they were original to me in my character of a 
malcontent footman, and have them brushed away like so many 
flies by these admirable young men. 

When I recounted this affair to the Cigarette, " They must 
have a curious idea of how English servants behave," says he, 
dryly, " for you treated me like a brute beast at the lock." 

I was a good 'deal mortified ; but my temper had suffered, it 
is a fact. 



AT LANDRECIES 

At Landrecies the rain still fell and the wind still blew ; but 
we found a double-bedded room with plenty of furniture, real 
water jugs with real water in them, and dinner, a real dinner, 
not innocent of real wine. After having been a peddler for one 
night, and a butt for the elements during the whole of the next 5 
day, these comfortable circumstances fell on my heart like sun- 
shine. There was an English fruiterer at dinner, traveling with 
a Belgian fruiterer ; in the evening at the cafe we watched our 
compatriot drop a good deal of money at corks, and I don't know 
why, but this pleased us. lo 

It turned out that we were to see more of Landrecies than 
we expected ; for the weather next day was simply bedlamite. 
It is not the place one would have chosen for a day's rest, for 
it consists almost entirely of fortifications. Within the ramparts, 
a few blocks of houses, a long row of barracks, and a church 15 
figure, with what countenance they may, as the town. There 
seem.s to be no trade, and a shopkeeper from whom I bought 
a sixpenny flint and steel was so much affected that he filled my 
pockets with spare flints into the bargain. The only public build- 
ings that had any interest for us were the hotel and the cafe. 20 
But we visited the church. There lies Marshal Clarke. But as 
neither of us had ever heard of that military hero, we bore the 
associations of the spot with fortitude. 

In all garrison towns, guard calls, and reveilles, and such like, 
make a fine, romantic interlude in civic business. Bugles, and 25 
drums, and fifes are of themselves most excellent things in nature, 
and when they carry the mind to marching armies and the pic- 
turesque vicissitudes of war they stir up something proud in the 

45 



46 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

heart. But in a shadow of a town like Landrecies, with little else 
moving, these points of war made a proportionate commotion. 
Indeed, they were the only things to remember. It was just the 
place to hear the round going by at night in the darkness, with 
5 the solid tramp of men marching, and the startling reverberations 
of the drum. It reminded you that even this place was a point 
in the great wayfaring system of Europe, and might on some 
future day be ringed about with cannon smoke and thunder, and 
make itself a name among strong towns. 

lo The drum, at any rate, from its martial voice and notable phys- 
iological effect, nay, even from its cumbrous and comical shape, 
stands alone among the instruments of noise. And if it be true, 
as I have heard it said, that drums are covered with asses' skin, 
what a picturesque irony is there in that ! As if this long-suffer- 

1 5 ing animal's hide had not been sufficiently belabored during life, 
now by Lyonese costermongers, now by presumptuous Hebrew 
prophets, it must be stripped from his poor hinder quarters after 
death, stretched on a drum, and beaten night after night round 
the streets of every garrison town in Europe. And up the heights 

2o of Alma and Spicheren, and wherever death has his red flag 
aflying, and sounds his own potent tuck upon the cannons, 
there also must the drummer boy, hurrying with white face 
over fallen comrades, batter and bemaul this slip of skin from 
the loins of peaceable donkeys. 

25 Generally a man is never more uselessly employed than when 
he is at this trick of bastinadoing asses' hide. We know what 
effect it has in life, and how your dull ass will not mend his pace 
with beating. But in this state of mummy and melancholy sur- 
vival of itself, when the hollow skin reverberates to the drum- 

30 mer's wrist, and each dub-a-dub goes direct to a man's heart, 
and puts madness there, and that disposition of the pulses which 
we, in our big way of talking, nickname heroism, — is there not 
something in the nature of a revenge upon the donkey's perse- 
cutors ? Of old, he might say, you drubbed me up hill and down 



AT LANDRECIES 47 

dale and I must endure ; but now that I am dead those dull 
thwacks that were scarcely audible in country lanes have be- 
come stirring music in front of the brigade, and for every blow 
that you lay on my old greatcoat, you will see a comrade stumble 
and fall. 5 

Not long after the drums had passed the cafe^ the Cigarette 
and the AretJmsa began to grow sleepy, and set out for the 
hotel, which was only a door or two away. But although we 
had been somewhat indifferent to Landrecies, Landrecies had 
not been indifferent to us. All day, we learned, people had been 10 
running out between the squalls to visit our two boats. Hun- 
dreds of persons, so said report, although it fitted ill with our 
idea of the town, — hundreds of persons had inspected them 
where they lay in a coal shed. We were becoming lions in 
Landrecies, who had been only peddlers the night before in Pont. 15 

And now, when we left the cafe^ we were pursued and over- 
taken at the hotel door by no less a person than the Juge de 
Paix ; a functionary, as far as I can make out, of the character 
of a Scotch Sheriff Substitute. He gave us his card and invited 
us to sup with him on the spot, very neatly, very gracefully, as 20 
Frenchmen can do these things. It was for the credit of Lan- 
drecies, said he ; and although we knew very well how little 
credit we could do the place, we must have been churlish fel- 
lows to refuse an invitation so politely introduced. 

The house of the judge was close by ; it was a well-appointed 25 
bachelor's establishment, with a curious collection of old brass 
warming pans upon the walls. Some of these were most elabo- 
rately carved. It seemed a picturesque idea for a collector. 
You could not help thinking how many nightcaps had wagged 
over these warming pans in past generations ; what jests may 30 
have been made and kisses taken while they were in service ; and 
how often they had been uselessly paraded in the bed of death. 
If they could only speak, at what absurd, indecorous, and tragical 
scenes had they not been present ? 



48 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The wine was excellent. When we made the judge our com- 
pliments upon a bottle, " I do not give it you as my worst," said 
he. I wonder when Englishmen will learn these hospitable graces. 
They are worth learning; they set off life and make ordinary 
5 moments ornamental. 

There were two other Landrecienses present. One was the 
collector of something or other, I forget what ; the other, we 
were told, was the principal notary of the place. So it happened 
that we all five more or less followed the law. At this rate, the 
lo talk was pretty certain to become technical. The Cigarette ex- 
pounded the poor laws very magisterially. . . . 

As the evening went on the wine grew more to my taste ; the 
spirits proved better than the wine ; the company was genial. 
This was the highest watermark of popular favor on the whole 
15 cruise. After all, being in a judge's house, was there not some- 
thing semiofficial in the tribute ? And so, remembering what a 
great country France is, we did full justice to our entertainment. 
Landrecies had been a long while asleep before we returned to 
the hotel ; and the sentries on the ramparts were already looking 
for daybreak. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 
CANAL BOATS 

Next day we made a late start in the rain. The judge politely 
escorted us to the end of the lock under an umbrella. We had 
now brought ourselves to a pitch of humility, in the matter of 
weather, not often attained except in the Scotch Highlands. 
A rag of blue sky or a glimpse of sunshine set our hearts 5 
singing; and when the rain was not heavy we counted the 
day almost fair. 

Long lines of barges lay one after another along the canal, 
many of them looking mighty spruce and shipshape in their 
jerkin of Archangel tar picked out with white and green. Some 10 
carried gay iron railings and quite a parterre of flowerpots. 
Children played on the decks, as heedless of the rain as if they 
had been brought up on Loch Caron side ; men fished over the 
gunwale, some of them under umbrellas ; women did their wash- 
ing ; and every barge boasted its mongrel cur by way of watch- 1 5 
dog. Each one barked furiously at the canoes, running alongside 
until he had got to the end of his own ship, and so passing on 
the word to the dog aboard the next. We must have seen some- 
thing like a hundred of these embarkations in the course of that 
day's paddle, ranged one after another like the houses in a street ; 20 
and from not one of them were we disappointed of this accom- 
paniment. It was like visiting a menagerie, the Cigarette remarked. 

These little cities by the canal side had a very odd effect upon 
the mind. They seemed, with their flowerpots and smoking 
chimneys, their washings and dinners, a rooted piece of nature 25 
in the scene ; and yet if only the canal below were to open, one 
junk after another would hoist sail or harness horses and swim 

49 



50 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

away into all parts of France ; and the impromptu hamlet would 
separate, house by house, to the four winds. The children who 
played together to-day by the Sambre and Oise Canal, each at 
his own father's threshold, when and where might they next 
5 meet? 

For some time past the subject of barges had occupied a great 
deal of our talk, and we had projected an old age on the canals 
of Europe. It was to be the most leisurely of progresses, now 
on a swift river at the tail of a steamboat, now waiting horses 

10 for days together on some inconsiderable junction. We should 
be seen pottering on deck in all the dignity of years, our white 
beards falling into our laps. We were ever to be busied among 
paint pots, so that there should be no white fresher and no green 
more emerald than ours, in all the navy of the canals. There 

15 should be books in the cabin, and tobacco jars, and some old 
Burgundy as red as a November sunset and as odorous as a 
violet in April. There should be a flageolet whence the Cigarette, 
with cunning touch, should draw melting music under the stars ; 
or perhaps, laying that aside, upraise his voice — somewhat thin- 

20 ner than of yore, and with here and there a quaver, or call it a 
natural grace note — in rich and solemn psalmody. 

All this simmering in my mind set me wishing to go aboard 
one of these ideal houses of lounging. I had plenty to choose 
from, as I coasted one after another and the dogs bayed at me 

25 for a vagrant. At last I saw a nice old man and his wife look- 
ing at me with some interest, so I gave them good day and 
pulled up alongside. I began with a remark upon their dog, 
which had somewhat the look of a pointer ; thence I slid into a 
compliment on Madame's flowers, and thence into a word in 

30 praise of their way of life. 

If you ventured on such an experiment in England you would 
get a slap in the face at once. The life would be shown to be 
a vile one, not without a side shot at your better fortune. 
Now, what I like so much in France is the clear, unflinching 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 5 1 

recognition by everybody of his own luck. They all know on 
which side their bread is buttered, and take a pleasure in showing 
it to others, which is surely the better part of religion. And they 
scorn to make a poor mouth over their poverty, which I take to 
be the better part of manliness. I have heard a woman in quite 5 
a better position at home, with a good bit of money in hand, refer 
to her own child with a horrid v/hine as " a poor man's child." I 
would not say such a thing to the Duke of Westminster. And 
the French are full of this spirit of independence. Perhaps it is 
the result of republican institutions, as they call them. Much lo 
more likely it is because there are so few people really poor 
that the whiners are not enough to keep each other in 
countenance. 

The people on the barge were delighted to hear that I ad- 
mired their state. They understood perfectly well, they told me, 1 5 
how Monsieur envied them. Without doubt Monsieur was rich, 
and in that case he might make a canal boat as pretty as a villa 
— joli coffune u?i chateau. And with that they invited me on 
board their own water villa. They apologized for their cabin ; 
they had not been rich enough to make it as it ought to be. 20 

'' The fire should have been here, at this side," explained the 
husband. '' Then one might have a writing table in the middle 
— books — and" (comprehensively) "all. It would be quite 
coquettish — ga serait toiit-a-f ait coquet T And he looked about 
him as though the improvements were already made. It was 25 
plainly not the first time that he had thus beautified his cabin in 
imagination ; and when next he makes a hit, I should expect to 
see the writing table in the middle. 

Madame had three birds in a cage. They were no great thing, 
she explained. Fine birds were so dear. They had sought to get 30 
a Hollandais last winter in Rouen (Rouen, thought I ; and is 
this whole mansion, with its dogs, and birds, and smoking chim- 
neys, so far a traveler as that, and as homely an object among 
the cliffs and orchards of the Seine as on the green plains of 



52 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Sambre ?) — they had sought to get a Hollandais last winter 
in Rouen; but these cost fifteen francs apiece — picture it — 
fifteen francs ! 

^^Pour U7i tout petit oiseau — For quite a little bird," added 
5 the husband. 

As I continued to admire, the apologetics died away, and the 
good people began to brag of their barge and their happy con- 
dition in life, as if they had been Emperor and Empress of the 
Indies. It was, in the Scotch phrase, a good hearing, and put 
lo me in good humor with the world. If people knew what an 
inspiriting thing it is to hear a man boasting, so long as he boasts 
of what he really has, I believe they would do it more freely and 
with a better grace. 

They began to ask about our voyage. You should have seen 
1 5 how they sympathized. They seemed half ready to give up their 
barge and follow us. But these canaletti are only gypsies semi- 
domesticated. The semidomestication came out in rather a 
pretty form. Suddenly Madame's brow darkened. ^^ Cepen- 
daiit,'' she began, and then stopped ; and then began again by 
2o asking me if I were single. 

'' Yes," said I. 

" And your friend who went by just now ? " 

He also was unmarried. 

Oh, then, all was well. She could not have wives left alone 
25 at home ; but since there were no wives in the question, we 
were doing the best we could. 

" To see about one in the world," said the husband, '' il n'y 

a que (a — there is nothing else worth while. A man, look you, 

who sticks in his own village like a bear," he went on, " very 

30 well, he sees nothing. And then death is the end of all. And 

he has seen nothing." 

Madame reminded her husband of an Englishman who had 
come up this canal in a steamer. 

" Perhaps Mr. Moens in the Ytene,'' I suggested. 



SAMBRE AND OISE CANAL 53 

" That 's it," assented the husband. " He had his wife and 
family with him, and servants. He came ashore at all the locks 
and asked the name of the villages, whether from boatmen or 
lock keepers ; and then he wrote, wrote them down. Oh, he 
wrote enormously ! I suppose it was a wager." 

A wager was a common enough explanation for our own 
exploits, but it seemed an original reason for taking notes. 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 

Before nine next morning the two canoes were installed on a 
light country cart at Etreux ; and we were soon following them 
along the side of a pleasant valley full of hop gardens and pop- 
lars. Agreeable villages lay here and there on the slope of the 

5 hill : notably, Tupigny, with the hop poles hanging their garlands 
in the very street, and the houses clustered with grapes. There 
was a faint enthusiasm on our passage ; weavers put their heads 
to the windows ; children cried out in ecstasy at sight of the 
two ''boaties" — barquettes ; and bloused pedestrians, who 

10 were acquainted with our charioteer, jested with him on the 
nature of his freight. 

We had a shower or two, but light and flying. The air was 
clean and sweet among all these green fields and green things 
-growing. There was not a touch of autumn in the weather. And 

15 when, at Vadencourt, we launched from a little lawn opposite a 
mill, the sun broke forth and set all the leaves shining in the 
valley of the Gise. 

The river was swollen with the long rains. From Vadencourt 
all the way to Origny it ran with ever-quickening speed, taking 

20 fresh heart at each mile, and racing as though it already smelled 
the sea. The water was yellow and turbulent, swung with an 
angry eddy among half -submerged willows, and made an angry 
clatter along stony shores. The course kept turning and turn- 
ing in a narrow and well-timbered valley. Now the river would 

25 approach the side, and run gliding along the chalky base of the 
hill, and show us a few open colza fields among the trees. Now 
it would skirt the garden walls of houses, where we might catch 
a glimpse through a doorway, and see a priest pacing in the 

54 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 55 

checkered sunlight. Again, the foliage closed so thickly in front 
that there seemed to be no issue ; only a thicket of willows over- 
topped by elms and poplars, under which the river ran flush and 
fleet, and where a kingfisher flew past like a piece of the blue 
sky. On these different manifestations* the sun poured its clear 5 
and catholic looks. The shadows lay as solid on the swift sur- 
face of the stream as on the stable meadows. The light sparkled ^^^ 
golden in the dancing poplar leaves, and brought the hills into 
communion with our eyes. And all the while the river never 
stopped running or took breath ;*^gtnd the reeds along ♦the whole 10 
valley stood shivering from top to toe^v 

There should be some myth (but if there is, I know it not) 
founded on the shivering of the reeds. There are not many 
things in nature more striking to man's eye. It is such an elo- 
quent pantomime of terror ; and to see such a number of terri- 1 5 
fied creatures taking sanctuary in every nook along the shore is 
enough to infect a silly human with alarm. Perhaps they are 
only acold, and no wonder, standing waist deep in the stream. 
Or, perhaps, they have never got accustomed to the speed and 
fury of the river's flux, or the miracle of its continuous body. 20 
Pan once played upon their forefathers ; and so, by the hands 
of his river, he still plays upon these later generations down all 
the valley of the Oise ; and plays the same air, both sweet and 
shrill, to tell us of -the beauty and the terror of the world. 

yThe canoe was like a leaf in the current. It took it up and 25 
shook it, and carried it masterfully away, like a Centaur carry- 
ing off a nymph. To keep some command on our direction re- 
quired hard and diligent plying of the paddle. The river was in 
such a hurry for the sea I^Every drop of water ran in a panic, 
like so many people in a frightened crowd. But what crowd 30 
was ever so numerous or so single-minded ? All the objects 
of sight went by at a dance measure ; the eyesight raced with 
the racing river; the exigencies of every moment kept the 
pegs screwed so tight that our being quivered like a well-tuned 



56 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

instrument, and the blood shook off its lethargy, and trotted 
through all the highways and byways of the veins and arteries, 
. and in and out of the heart, as if circulation were but a holiday 
journey and not the daily moil of threescore years and ten. 
5 The reeds might nod their heads in warning, and with tremu- 
lous gestures tell how the river was as cruel as it was strong and 
cold, and how death lurked in the eddy underneath the willows. 
But the reeds had to stand where they were ; and those who 
stand still are always timid advisers. As for us, we could have 

lo shouted aloud. If this lively and beautiful river were, indeed, a 
thing of death's contrivance, the old ashen rogue had famously 
outwitted himself with us. I was living three to the minute. I 
was scoring points against him every stroke of my paddle, every 
turn of the stream. I have rarely had better profit of my life. 

1 5 For I think we may look upon our little private war with death 
somewhat in this light. If a man knows he will sooner or later 
be robbed upon a journey, he will have a bottle of the best in 
every inn, and look upon all his extravagances as so much gained 
upon the thieves. And above all, where, instead of simply spend- 

2o ing, he makes a profitable investment for some of his money, 
when it will be out of risk of loss. So every bit of brisk living, 
and above all when it is healthful, is just so much gained upon 
the wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the less in our pock- 
ets, the more in our stomachs, when he cries, Stand and deliver ! 

25 A swift stream is a favorite artifice of his, and one that brings 
him in a comfortable thing per annum ; but when he and I come 
to settle our accounts I shall whistle in his face for these hours 
upon the upper Oise. 

Towards afternoon we got fairly drunken with the sunshine 

30 and the exhilaration of the pace. We could no longer contain 
ourselves and our content. The canoes were too small for us ; 
we must be out and stretch ourselves on shore. And so in a 
green meadow we bestowed our limbs on the grass, and smoked 
deifying tobacco, and proclaimed the world excellent. It was 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 57 

the last good hour of the day, and I dwell upon it with extreme 
complacency. 

On one side of the valley, high upon the chalky summit of the 
hill, a plowman with his team appeared and disappeared at 
regular intervals. At each revelation he stood still for a few 5 
seconds against the sky, for all the world (as the Cigarette de- 
clared) like a toy Burns who had just plowed up the Moun- 
tain Daisy. He was the only living thing within view, unless 
we are to count the river. 

On the other side of the valley a group of red roofs and a lo 
belfry showed among the foliage. Thence some inspired bell 
ringer made the afternoon musical on a chime of bells. There 
was something very sweet and taking in the air he played, and 
we thought we had never heard bells speak so intelligibly or sing 
so melodiously as these. It must have been to some such meas- 1 5 
ure that the spinners and the young maids sang, " Come away. 
Death," in the Shakespearean Illyria. There is so often a threat- 
ening note, something blatant and metallic, in the voice of bells, 
that I believe we have fully more pain than pleasure from hear- 
ing them ; but these, as they sounded abroad, now high, now 20 
low, now with a plaintive cadence that caught the ear like the 
burden of a popular song, were always moderate and tunable, 
and seemed to fall in with the spirit of still, rustic places, like 
the noise of a waterfall or the babble of a rookery in spring. I 
could have asked the bell ringer for his blessing, good, sedate 25 
old man, who swung the rope so gently to the time of his medi- 
tations. I could have blessed the priest or the heritors, or who- 
ever may be concerned with such affairs in France, who had left 
these sweet old bells to gladden the afternoon, and not held 
meetings, and made collections, and had their names repeatedly 30 
printed in the local paper, to rig up a peal of brand-new, brazen, 
Birmingham-hearted substitutes, who should bombard their sides 
to the provocation of a brand-new bell ringer, and fill the echoes 
of the valley with terror and riot. 



58 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

At last the bells ceased, and with their note the sun withdrew. 
The piece was at an end ; shadow and silence possessed the 
valley of the Oise. We took to the paddle with glad hearts, like 
people who have sat out a noble performance and return to work. 
5 The river was more dangerous here ; it ran swifter, the eddies 
were more sudden and violent. All the way down we had had 
our fill of difficulties. Sometimes it was a weir which could be 
shot, sometimes one so shallow and full of stakes that we must 
withdraw the boats from the water and carry them round. But 

lo the chief sort of obstacle was a consequence of the late high 
winds. Every two or three hundred yards a tree had fallen across 
the river, and usually involved more than another in its fall. 
Often there was free water at the end, and we could steer 
round the leafy promontory and hear the water sucking and 

15 bubbling among the twigs. Often, again, when the tree 
reached from bank to bank, there was room, by lying close, 
to shoot through underneath, canoe and all. Sometimes it was 
necessary to get out upon the trunk itself and pull the boats 
across ; and sometimes, where the stream was too impetuous 

20 for this, there was nothing for it but to land and " carry over." 
This made a fine series of accidents in the day's career, and kept 
us aware of ourselves. 

Shortly after our reembarkation, while I was leading by a 
long way, and still full of a noble, exulting spirit in honor of the 

25 sun, the swift pace, and the church bells, the river made one of 
its leonine pounces round a corner, and I w^as aware of another 
fallen tree within a storiecast. I had my backboard down in a 
trice, and aimed for a place where the trunk seemed high enough 
above the water, and the branches not too thick to let me slip 

30 below. When a man has just vowed eternal brotherhood with 
the universe he is not in a temper to take great determinations 
coolly, and this, which might have been a very important deter- 
mination for me, had not been taken under a happy star. The 
tree caught me about the chest, and while I was yet struggling 



THE OISE IN FLOOD 59 

to make less of myself and get through, the river took the mat- 
ter out of my hands and bereaved me of my boat. The Arethusa 
swung round broadside on, leaned over, ejected so much of me 
as still remained on board, and, thus disencumbered, whipped 
under the tree, righted, and went merrily away downstream. 5 

I do not know how long it was before I scrambled on to the 
tree to which I was left clinging, but it was longer than I cared 
about. My thoughts were of a grave and almost somber char- 
acter, but I still clung to my paddle. The stream ran away with 
my heels as fast as I could pull up my shoulders, and I seemed, 10 
by the weight, to have all the water of the Oise in my trousers' 
pockets. You can never know, till you try it, what a dead pull 
a river makes against a man. Death himself had me by the 
heels, for this was his last ambuscade, and he must now join 
personally in the fray. And still I held to my paddle. At last 15 
I dragged myself on to my stomach on the trunk, and lay there 
a breathless sop, with a mingled sense of humor and injustice. 
A poor figure I must have presented to Burns upon the hilltop 
with his team. But there was the paddle in my hand. On my 
tomb, if ever I have one, I mean to get these w^ords inscribed : 20 
" He clung to his paddle." 

The Cigarette had gone past awhile before ; for, as I might 
have observed, if I had been a little less pleased with the uni- 
verse at the moment, there was a clear way round the tree top 
at the farther side. He had offered his services to haul me out, 25 
but, as I was then already on my elbows, I had declined and 
sent him downstream after the truant Arethusa. The stream 
was too rapid for a man to mount with one canoe, let alone two, 
upon his hands, so I crawled along the trunk to shore, and pro- 
ceeded down the meadows by the riverside. I was so cold that 30 
my heart was sore. I had now an idea of my own why the reeds 
so bitterly shivered. I could have given any of them a lesson. 
The Cigarette remarked, facetiously, that he thought I was " tak- 
ing exercise " as I drew near, until he made out for certain that 



6o AN INLAND VOYAGE 

I was only twittering with cold. I had a rubdown with a towel, 
and donned a dry suit from the india-rubber bag. But I was not 
my own man again for the rest of the voyage. I had a queasy 
sense that I wore my last dry clothes upon my body. The strug- 

5 gle had tired me ; and, perhaps, whether I knew it or not, I was 
a little dashed in spirit. The devouring element in the universe 
had leaped out against me, in this green valley quickened by a 
running stream. The bells were all very pretty in their way, but 
I had heard some of the hollow notes of Pan's music. Would 

o the wicked river drag me down by the heels, indeed ? and look 
so beautiful all the time ? Nature's good humor was only skin 
deep, after all. 

There was still a long way to go by the winding course of the 
stream, and darkness had fallen, and a late bell was ringing in 

5 Origny Sainte-Benoite when we arrived. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
A BY-DAY 

The next day was Sunday, and the church bells had little rest ; 
indeed, I do not think I remember anywhere else so great a 
choice of services as were here offered to the devout. And 
while the bells made merry in the sunshine, all the world with 
his dog was out shooting among the beets and colza, 5 

In the morning a hawker and his wife went down the street 
at a footpace, singing to a very slow, lamentable music, O 
France, mes amours. It brought everybody to the door; and 
when our landlady called in the man to buy the words, he had 
not a copy of them left. She was not the first nor the second lo 
who had been taken with the song. There is something very 
pathetic in the love of the French people, since the war, for 
dismal patriotic music making. I have watched a forester from 
Alsace while some one was singing Les vialheurs de la Fraiice, 
at a baptismal party in the neighborhood of Fontainebleau. He 15 
arose from the table and took his son aside, close by where I 
was standing. " Listen, listen," he said, bearing on the boy's 
shoulder, " and remember this, my son." A little after he went 
out into the garden suddenly, and I could hear him sobbing in 
the darkness. 20 

The humiliation of their arms and the loss of Alsace and Lor- 
raine made a sore pull on the endurance of this sensitive people ; 
and their hearts are still hot, not so much against Germany as 
against the Empire. In what other country will you find a pa- 
triotic ditty bring all the world into the street? But affliction 25 
heightens love ; and we shall never know we are Englishmen 
until we have lost India. Independent America is still the cross 

61 



64 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

" One has only to stretch the cords," concluded another, " and 
then tum-tumty-tum " ; he imitated the result with spirit. 

Was not this a graceful little ovation ? Where this people 
finds the secret of its pretty speeches I cannot imagine, unless 
5 the secret should be no other than a sincere desire to please. 
But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing 
neatly ; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give in 
one's resignation to society. 

The old gentleman in the blouse stole into the coach house, 
lo and somewhat irrelevantly informed the Cigarette that he was 
the father of the three girls and four more ; quite an exploit for 
a Frenchman. 

" You are very fortunate," answered the Cigarette politely. 

And the old gentleman, having apparently gained his point, 
15 stole away again. 

We all got very friendly together. The girls proposed to start 
with us on the morrow, if you please. And, jesting apart, every 
one was anxious to know the hour of our departure. Now, when 
you are going to crawl into your canoe from a bad launch, a 
20 crowd, however friendly, is undesirable, and so we told them not 
before twelve, and mentally determined to be off by ten at latest. 

Towards evening we went abroad again to post some letters. 
It was cool and pleasant ; the long village was quite empty, ex- 
cept for one or two urchins who followed us as they might have 
25 followed a menagerie ; the hills and the tree tops looked in from 
all sides through the clear air, and the bells were chiming for 
yet another service. 

Suddenly we sighted the three girls, standing, with a fourth 
sister, in front of a shop on the wide selvage of the roadway. 
30 We had been very merry with them a little while ago, to be sure. 
But what was the etiquette of Origny ? Had it been a country 
road, of course we should have spoken to them ; but here, under 
the eyes of all the gossips, ought we to do even as much as bow ? 
I consulted the Cigarette, 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 65 

^' Look," said he. 

I looked. There were the four girls on the same spot ; but 
now four backs were turned to us, very upright and conscious. 
Corporal Modesty had given the word of command, and the 
well-disciplined picket had gone right-about-face like a single 5 
person. They maintained this formation all the while we were 
in sight ; but we heard them tittering among themselves, and 
the girl whom we had not met laughed with open mouth, and 
even looked over her shoulder at the enemy. I wonder was 
it altogether modesty after all, or in part a sort of country 10 
provocation ? 

As we were returning to the inn we beheld something float- 
ing in the ample field of golden evening sky, above the chalk 
cliffs and the trees that grow along their summit. It was too 
high up, too large, and too steady for a kite; and, as it was 15 
dark, it could not be a star. For, although a star were as black 
as ink and as rugged as a walnut, so amply does the sun bathe 
heaven with radiance that it would sparkle like a point of light 
for us. The village was dotted with people with their heads in 
air ; and the children w^ere in a bustle all along the street and 20 
far up the straight road that climbs the hill, where we could still 
see them running in loose knots. It was a balloon, we learned, 
which had left St. Quentin at half past five that evening. Mighty 
composedly the majority of the grown people took it. But we 
were English, and were soon running up the hill with the best. 25 
Being travelers ourselves in a small way, we would fain have 
seen these other travelers alight. 

The spectacle was over by the time we gained the top of the 
hill. All the gold had withered out of the sky, and the balloon 
had disappeared. Whither ? I ask myself ; caught up into the 30 
seventh heaven ? or come safely to land somewhere in that blue, 
uneven distance, into which the roadway dipped and melted be- 
fore our eyes ? Probably the aeronauts were already warming 
themselves at a farm chimney, for they say it is cold in these 



66 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

unhomely regions of the air. The night fell swiftly. Roadside 
trees and disappointed sight-seers, returning through the meadows, 
stood out in black against a margin of low, red sunset. It was 
cheerfuller to face the other way, and so down the hill we went, 
with a full moon, the color of a melon, swinging high above the 
wooded valley, and the white cliffs behind us faintly reddened by 
the fire of the chalk kilns. 

The lamps were lighted, and the salads were being made in 
Origny Sainte-Benoite by the river. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 
THE COMPANY AT TABLE 

Although we came late for dinner, the company at table 
treated us to sparkling wine. " That is how we are in France," 
said one. " Those who sit down with us are our friends." And 
the rest applauded. 

They were three altogether, and an odd trio to pass the S 
Sunday with. 

Two of them were guests like ourselves, botli men of the 
north. One ruddy, and of a full habit of body, with copious 
black hair and beard, the intrepid hunter of France, who 
thought nothing so small, not even a lark or a minnow, but lo 
he might vindicate his prowess by its capture. For such a great, 
healthy man, his hair flourishing like Samson's, his arteries run- 
ning buckets of red blood, to boast of these infinitesimal exploits, 
produced a feeling of disproportion in the world, as when a 
steam hammer is set to cracking nuts. The other was a quiet, 15 
subdued person, blond, and lymphatic, and sad, with something 
the look of a Dane : " Tristes tetes de Danois /^^ as Gaston La- 
fenestre used to say. 

I must not let that name go by without a word for the best 
of all good fellows, now gone down into the dust. We shall 20 
never again see Gaston in his forest costume, — he was Gaston 
with all the world, in affection, not in disrespect, — nor hear him 
wake the echoes of Fontainebleau with the woodland horn. Never 
again shall his kind smile put peace among all races of artistic 
men, and make the Englishman at home in France. Nevermore 25 
shall the sheep, who were not more innocent at heart than he, 
sit all unconsciously for his industrious pencil. He died too 

67 



68 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

early, at the very moment when he was beginning to put forth 
fresh sprouts and blossom into something worthy of himself ; 
and yet none who knew him will think he lived in vain. I never 
knew a man so little, for whom yet I had so much affection ; 
5 and I find it a good test of others, how much they had learned 
to understand and value him. His was, indeed, a good influence 
in life while he was still among us ; he had a fresh laugh ; it did 
you good to see him ; and, however sad he may have been at 
heart, he always bore a bold and cheerful countenance and took 

lo fortune's worst as it were the showers of spring. But now his 
mother sits alone by the side of Fontainebleau woods, where he 
gathered mushrooms in his hardy and penurious youth. 

Many of his pictures found their way across the Channel ; 
besides those which were stolen, when a dastardly Yankee left 

15 him alone in London with two English pence, and, perhaps, 
twice as many words of English. If any one who reads these 
lines should have a scene of sheep, in the manner of Jacques, 
with this fine creature's signature, let him tell himself that one 
of the kindest and bravest of men has lent a hand to decorate 

20 his lodging. There may be better pictures in the National Gal- 
lery ; but not a painter among the generations had a better 
heart. Precious in the sight of the Lord of humanity, the Psalms 
tell us, is the death of his saints. It had need to be precious ; 
for it is very costly, when, by a stroke, a mother is left desolate, 

25 and the peacemaker and/^^-^^ looker of a whole society is laid 
in the ground with Caesar and the Twelve Apostles. 

There is something lacking among the oaks of Fontainebleau ; 
and when the dessert comes in at Barbizon, people look to the 
door for a figure that is gone. 

30 The third of our companions at Origny was no less a person 
than the landlady's husband ; not properly the landlord, since 
he worked himself in a factory during the day, and came to his 
own house at evening as a guest ; a man worn to skin and bone 
by perpetual excitement, with baldish head, sharp features, and 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 69 

swift, shining eyes. On Saturday, describing some paltry adven- 
ture at a duck hunt, he broke a plate into a score of fragments. 
Whenever he made a remark he would look all round the table 
with his chin raised and a spark of green light in either eye, 
seeking approval. His wife appeared now and again in the 5 
doorway of the room, where she was superintending dinner, 
with a '' Henri, you forget yourself," or a '^ Henri, you can 
surely talk without making such a noise." Indeed, that was 
what the honest fellow could not do. On the most trifling mat- 
ter his eyes kindled, his fist visited the table, and his voice rolled 10 
abroad in changeful thunder. I never saw such a petard of a 
man ; I think the devil was in him. He had two favorite expres- 
sions, " It is logical," or illogical, as the case might be ; and this 
other thrown out with a certain bravado, as a man might unfurl 
a banner, at the beginning of many a long and sonorous story : 15 
" I am a proletarian, you see." Indeed, we saw it very well. 
God forbid that ever I should find him handling a gun in Paris 
streets. That will not be a good moment for the general public. 
I thought his two phrases very much represented the good 
and evil of his class, and, to some extent, of his country. It is 20 
a strong thing to say what one is, and not be ashamed of it; 
even although it be in doubtful taste to repeat the statement too 
often in one evening. I should not admire it in a duke, of 
course ; but as times go the trait is honorable in a workman. 
On the other hand, it is not at all a strong thing to put one's 25 
reliance upon logic ; and our own logic particularly, for it is gen- 
erally wrong. We never know where we are to end if once we 
begin following words or doctors. There is an upright stock in 
a man's own heart that is trustier than any syllogism ; and the 
eyes, and the sympathies, and appetites know a thing or two 30 
that have never yet been stated in controversy. Reasons are as 
plentiful as blackberries ; and, like fisticuffs, they serve impar- 
tially with all sides. Doctrines do not stand or fall by their proofs 
and are only logical in so far as they are cleverly put. An able 



70 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

controversialist no more than an able general demonstrates the 
justice of his cause. But France is all gone wandering after one 
or two big words ; it will take some time before they can be satis- 
fied that they are no more than words, however big ; and, when 
5 once that is done, they will perhaps find logic less diverting. 
The conversation opened with details of the day's shooting. 
When all the sportsmen of a village shoot over the village terri- 
tory /r^ indiviso, it is plain that many questions of etiquette and 
priority must arise. 

lo '' Here now," cried the landlord, brandishing a plate, " here 
is a field of beetroot. Well. Here am I, then. I advance, do 
I not t Eh bien I sacristi " ; and the statement, waxing louder, 
rolls off into a reverberation of oaths, the speaker glaring about 
for sympathy, and everybody nodding his head to him in the 

1 5 name of peace. 

The ruddy Northman told some tales of his own prowess in 
keeping order : notably one of a Marquis. 

" Marquis," I said, '' if you take another step I fire upon you. 
You have committed a dirtiness. Marquis." 

20 Whereupon, it appeared, the Marquis touched his cap and 
withdrew. 

The landlord applauded noisily. " It was well done," he said. 
'' He did all that he could. He admitted he was wrong." And 
then oath upon oath. He was no marquis-lover, either, but he 

25 had a sense of justice in him, this proletarian host of ours. 

From the matter of hunting, the talk veered into a general 
comparison of Paris and the country. The proletarian beat the 
table like a drum in praise of Paris. '' What is Paris ? Paris is 
the cream of France. There are no Parisians ; it is you, and I, 

30 and everybody who are Parisians. A man has eighty chances 
per cent to get on in the world in Paris." And he drew a vivid 
sketch of the workman in a den no bigger than a dog hutch, 
making articles that were to go all over the world. ^^Eh bie?t, 
giioiy c'est 77iag7iifiqtie^ f<7/" cried he. 



ORIGNY SAINTE-BENOITE 7 1 

The sad Northman interfered in praise of a peasant's life ; he 
thought Paris bad for men and women. '' Centralization," said 
he — 

But the landlord was at his throat in a moment. It was all 
logical, he showed him, and all magnificent. " What a spectacle ! 5 
What a glance for an eye ! " And the dishes reeled upon the 
table under a cannonade of blows. 

Seeking to make peace, I threw in a word in praise of the 
liberty of opinion in France. I could hardly have shot more 
amiss. There was an instant silence and a great wagging of 10 
significant heads. They did not fancy the subject, it was plain, 
but they gave me to understand that the sad Northman was a 
martyr on account of his views. " Ask him a bit," said they. 
" Just ask him." 

'' Yes, sir," said he in his quiet way, answering me, although 15 
I had not spoken, " I am afraid there is less liberty of opinion 
in France than you may imagine." And with that he dropped 
his eyes and seemed to consider the subject at an end. 

Our curiosity was mightily excited at this. How, or why, or 
when was this lymphatic bagman martyred ? We concluded at 20 
once it was on some religious question, and brushed up our 
memories of the Inquisition, which were principally drawn from 
Poe's horrid story, and the sermon in " Tristram Shandy," I 
believe. 

On the morrow we had an opportunity of going further into 25 
the question ; for when we rose very early to avoid a sympathiz- 
ing deputation at our departure, we found the hero up before us. 
He was breaking his fast on white wine and raw onions, in order 
to keep up the character of martyr, I conclude. We had a long 
conversation, and made out what we wanted in spite of his re- 30 
serve. But here was a truly curious circumstance. It seems 
possible for two Scotchmen and a Frenchman to discuss during 
a long half hour, and each nationality have a different idea in 
view throughout. It was not till the very end that we discovered 



72 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

his heresy had been political, or that he suspected our mistake. 
The terms and spirit in which he spoke of his political beliefs 
were, in our eyes, suited to religious beliefs. And vice ve?'sa. 

Nothing could be more characteristic of the two countries. 
Politics are the religion of France, as Nanty Ewart would have 

said, "A d d bad religion," while we, at home, keep most 

of our bitterness for all differences about a hymn book or a 
Hebrew word which, perhaps, neither of the parties can trans- 
late. And perhaps the misconception is typical of many others 
that may never be cleared up ; not only between people of differ- 
ent race, but between those of different sex. 

As for our friend's martyrdom, he was a Communist, or per- 
haps only a Communard, which is a very different thing, and 
had lost one or more situations in consequence. I think he had 
also been rejected in marriage ; but perhaps he had a sentimental 
way of considering business which deceived me. He was a mild, 
gentle creature, anyway, and I hope he has got a better situation 
and married a more suitable wife since then. 



DOWN THE OISE 
TO MOY 

Carnival notoriously cheated us at first ' Finding us easy in 
our ways, he regretted having let us off so cheaply, and, taking 
me aside, told me a cock-and-bull story, with the moral of another 
five francs for the narrator. The thing was palpably absurd ; 
but I paid up, and at once dropped all friendliness of manner 5 
and kept him in his place as an inferior, with freezing British 
dignity. He saw in a moment that he had gone too far and 
killed a willing horse ; his face fell ; I am sure he would have 
refunded if he could only have thought of a decent pretext. He 
wished me to drink with him, but I would none of his drinks. 10 
He grew pathetically tender in his professions, but I walked be- 
side him in silence or answered him in stately courtesies, and, 
when we got to the landing place, passed the word in English 
slang to the Cigarette. 

In spite of the false scent we had thrown out the day before 15 
there must have been fifty people about the bridge. We were 
as pleasant as we could be with all but Carnival. We said good- 
by, shaking hands with the old gentleman who knew the river 
and the young gentleman who had a smattering of English, but 
never a word for Carnival. Poor Carnival, here was a humilia- 20 
tion. He who had been so much identified with the canoes, who 
had given orders in our name, who had shown off the boats and 
even the boatmen like a private exhibition of his own, to be now 
so publicly shamed by the lions of his caravan ! I never saw 
anybody look more crestfallen than he. He hung in the back- 25 
ground, coming timidly forward ever and again as he thought 
he saw some symptom of a relenting humor, and falling 

11 



74 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

hurriedly back when he encountered a cold stare. Let us hope 
it will be a lesson to him. 

I would not have mentioned Carnival's peccadillo had not the 
thing been so uncommon in France. This, for instance, was the 
5 only case of dishonesty or even sharp practice in our whole 
voyage. We talk very much about our honesty in England. It 
is a good rule to be on your guard wherever you hear great pro- 
fessions about a very little piece of virtue. If the English could 
only hear how they are spoken of abroad, they might confine 

lo themselves for a while to remedying the fact, and perhaps even 
when that was done, give us fewer of their airs. 

The young ladies, the graces of Origny, were not present at 
our start ; but when we got round to the second bridge, behold, 
it was black with sight-seers ! We were loudly cheered, and for 

15 a good way below young lads and lasses ran along the bank, still 
cheering. What with current and paddling, we were flashing 
along like swallows. It was no joke to keep up with us upon 
the woody shore. But the girls picked up their skirts, as if they 
v/ere sure they had good ankles, and followed until their breath 

20 was out. The last to weary were the three graces and a couple 
of companions ; and just as they, too, .had had enough, the fore- 
most of the three leaped upon a tree stump and kissed her hand 
to the canoeists. Not Diana herself, although this was more of 
a Venus, after all, could have done a graceful thing more grace- 

25 fully. " Come back again ! " she cried ; and all the others echoed 
her ; and the hills about Origny repeated the words, " Come 
back." But the river had us round an angle in a twinkling, and 
we were alone with the green trees and running water. 

Come back ? There is no coming back, young ladies, on the 

30 impetuous stream of life. 

The merchant bows unto the seaman's star. 

The plowman from the sun his season takes. 

And we must all set our pocket watches by the clock of fate. 

There is a headlong, forthright tide, that bears away man with 



DOWN THE OISE 75 

his fancies like straw, and runs fast in time and space. It is 
full of curves like this, your winding river of the Oise ; and 
lingers and returns in pleasant pastorals ; and yet, rightly 
thought upon, never returns at all. For though it should revisit 
the same acre of meadow in the same hour, it will have made 5 
an ample sweep betweenwhiles ; many little streams will have 
fallen in ; many exhalations risen towards the sun ; and even 
although it were the same acre, it will not be the same river 
Oise. And thus, O graces of Origny, although the wandering 
fortune of my life should carry me back again to where you 10 
await death's whistle by the river, that will not be the old I who 
walks the street ; and those wives and mothers, say, will those 
be you ? 

There was never any mistake about the Oise, as a matter of 
fact. In these upper reaches it was still in a prodigious hurry 15 
for the sea. It ran so fast and merrily, through all the windings 
of its channel, that I strained my thumb fighting with the rapids, 
and had to paddle all the rest of the way with one hand turned 
up. Sometimes it had to serve mills ; and being still a little 
river, ran very dry and shallow in the meanwhile. We had to 20 
put our legs out of the boat, and shove ourselves off the sand 
of the bottom with our feet. And still it went on its way sing- 
ing among the poplars, and making a green valley in the world. 
After a good woman, and a good book, and tobacco, there is 
nothing so agreeable on earth as a river. I forgave it its attempt 25 
on my life ; which was, after all, one part owing to the unruly 
winds of heaven that had blown down the tree, one part to my 
own mismanagement, and only a third part to the river itself, 
and that not out of malice, but from its great preoccupation over 
its own business of getting to the sea. A difficult business, too ; 30 
for the detours it had to make are not to be counted. The 
geographers seem to have given up the attempt ; for I found 
no map represent the infinite contortion of its course. A fact 
will say more than any of them. After we had been some hours, 



76 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

three, if I mistake not, flitting by the trees at this smooth, break- 
neck gallop, when we came upon a hamlet and asked where we 
were, we had got no further than four kilometers (say two miles 
and a half) from Origny. If it were not for the honor of the 
5 thing (in the Scotch saying), we might almost as well have been 
standing still. 

We lunched on a meadow inside a parallelogram of poplars. 
The leaves danced and prattled in the wind all round about us. 
The river hurried on meanwhile, and seemed to chide at our 

lo delay. Little we cared. The river knew where it was going; 
not so we ; the less our hurry, where we found good quarters 
and a pleasant theater for a pipe. At that hour stockbrokers 
were shouting in Paris Bourse for two or three per cent ; but we 
minded them as little as the sliding stream, and sacrificed a heca- 

15 tomb of minutes to the gods of tobacco and digestion. Hurry 
is the resource of the faithless. Where a man can trust his own 
heart, and those of his friends, to-morrow is as good as to-day. 
And if he die in the meanwhile, why, then, there he dies, and 
the question is solved. 

20 We had to take to the canal in the course of the afternoon ; 
because where it crossed the river there was, not a bridge, but 
a siphon. If it had not been for an excited fellow on the bank 
we should have paddled right into the siphon, and thenceforward 
not paddled any more. We met a man, a gentleman, on the 

25 towpath, who was much interested in our cruise. And I was 
witness to a strange seizure of lying suffered by the Cigarette ; 
who, because his knife came from Norway, narrated all sorts 
of adventures in that country, where he has never been. 
He was quite feverish at the end, and pleaded demoniacal 

30 possession. 

Moy (pronounce Moy) was a pleasant little village, gathered 
round a chateau in a moat. The air was perfumed with hemp 
from neighboring fields. At the Golden Sheep we found ex- 
cellent entertainment. German shells from the siege of La Fere, 



DOWN THE OISE JJ 

Niirnberg figures, goldfish in a bowl, and all manner of knick- 
knacks, embellished the public room. The landlady was a stout, 
plain, shortsighted, motherly body, with something not far short 
of a genius for cookery. She had a guess of her excellence her- 
self. After every dish was sent in, she would come and look on 
at the dinner for a while, with puckered, blinking eyes. ''C'esf 
bo?i^ 7i''est-cepasV'' she would say; and, when she had received 
a proper answer, she disappeared into the kitchen. That 
common French dish, partridge and cabbages, became a new 
thing in my eyes at the Golden Sheep ; and many subsequent 
dinners have bitterly disappointed me in consequence. Sweet 
was our rest in the Golden Sheep at Moy. 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 

We lingered in Moy a good part of the day, for we were 
fond of being philosophical, and scorned long journeys and 
early starts on principle. The place, moreover, invited to repose. 
People in elaborate shooting costumes sallied from the chateau 
5 with guns and game bags ; and this was a pleasure in itself, to 
remain behind while these elegant pleasure seekers took the 
first of the morning. In this way all the world may be an aris- 
tocrat, and play the duke among marquises, and the reigning 
monarch among dukes, if he will only outvie them in tranquil- 

lo lity. An imperturbable demeanor comes from perfect patience. 
Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in 
fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock 
during a thunderstorm. 

We made a very short day of it to La Fere ; but the dusk 

15 was falling and a small rain had begun before we stowed the 
boats. La Fere is a fortified town in a plain, and has two belts 
of rampart. Between the first and the second extends a region 
of waste land and cultivated patches. Here and there along 
the wayside were posters forbidding trespass in the name of 

20 military engineering. At last a second gateway admitted us to 
the town itself. Lighted windows looked gladsome, whiffs of 
comfortable cookery came abroad upon the air. The town was 
full of the military reserve, out for the French autumn maneu- 
vers, and the reservists walked speedily and wore their formid- 

25 able greatcoats. It was a fine night to be within doors over 
dinner, and hear the rain upon the windows. 

The Cigarette and I could not sufficiently congratulate each 
other on the prospect, for we had been told there was a capital 

78 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 79 

inn at La Fere. Such a dinner as we were going to eat ! such 
beds as we were to sleep in 1 and all the while the rain raining 
on houseless folk over all the poplared countryside. It made 
our mouths water. The inn bore the name of some woodland 
animal, stag, or hart, or hind, I forget which. But I shall never 5 
forget how spacious and how eminently habitable it looked as 
we drew near. The carriage entry was lighted up, not by in- 
tention, but from the mere superfluity of fire and candle in the 
house. A rattle of many dishes came to our ears ; we sighted 
a great field of tablecloth ; the kitchen glowed like a forge and 10 
smelt like a garden of things to eat. 

Into this, the inmost shrine and physiological heart of a hos- 
telry, with all its furnaces in action and all its dressers charged 
with viands, you are now to suppose us making our triumphal 
entry, a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp India- 15 
rubber bag upon his arm. I do not believe I have a sound view 
of that kitchen ; I saw it through a sort of glory, but it seemed 
to me crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned 
round with their saucepans and looked at us with surprise. 
There was no doubt about the landlady, however ; there she 20 
was, heading her army, a flushed, angry woman, full of affairs. 
Her I asked politely — too politely, thinks the Cigarette — if 
we could have beds, she surveying us coldly from head to foot. 

'' You will find beds in the suburb," she remarked. " We are 
too busy for the like of you." 25 

If we could make art entrance, change our clothes, and order 
a bottle of wine, I felt sure we could put things right ; so said 
I, " If we cannot sleep, we may at least dine," — and was for 
depositing my bag. 

What a terrible convulsion of nature was that which followed 30 
in the landlady's face ! She made a run at us and stamped her 
foot. 

" Out with you, — out of the door!" she screeched. ^^ Sor- 
tez ! sortez / sortez par la porte ! " 



80 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

I do not know how it happened, but next moment we were 
out in the rain and darkness, and I was cursing before the 
carriage entry like a disappointed mendicant. Where were the 
boating men of Belgium ? where the judge and his good wines ? 
5 and where the graces of Origny ? Black, black was the night 
after the firelit kitchen, but what was that to the blackness in 
our heart ? This was not the first time that I have been refused 
a lodging. Often and often have I planned what I should do if 
such a misadventure happened to me again. And nothing is 

lo easier to plan. But to put in execution, with the heart boiling 
at the indignity ? Try it ; try it only once, and tell me what 
you did. 

It is all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six 
hours of police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal 

15 rejection from an inn door change your views upon the subject 
like a course of lectures. As long as you keep in the upper 
regions, with all the world bowing to you as you go, social 
arrangements have a very handsome air ; but once get under 
the wheels and you wish society were at the devil. I will give 

20 most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then I will 
offer them twopence for what remains of their morality. 

For my part, when I was turned out of the Stag, or the Hind, 
or whatever it was, I would have set the temple of Diana on 
fire if it had been handy. There was no crime complete enough 

25 to express my disapproval of human institutions. As for the 
Cigarette^ I never knew a man so altered. '' We have been 
taken for peddlers again," said he. " Good God, what it must be 
to be a peddler in reality ! " He particularized a complaint for 
every joint in the landlady's body. Timon was a philanthropist 

30 alongside of him. And then, when he was at the top of his 
maledictory bent, he would suddenly break away and begin 
whimperingly to commiserate the poor. " I hope to God," he 
said, — and I trust the prayer was answered, — '' that I shall 
never be uncivil to a peddler." Was this the imperturbable 



LA FERE OF CURSED MEMORY 8 1 

Cigarette^ This, this was he. Oh, change beyond report, thought, 
or belief I 

Meantime the heaven wept upon our heads ; and the win- 
dows grew brighter as the night increased in darkness. We 
trudged in and out of La Fere streets ; we saw shops, and pri- 5 
vate houses where people were copiously dining ; we saw sta- 
bles where carters' nags had plenty of fodder and clean straw ; 
we saw no end of reservists, who were very sorry for them- 
selves this wet night, I doubt not, and yearned for their coun- 
try homes ; but had they not each man his place in La Fere 10 
barracks ? And we, what had we ? 

There seemed to be no other inn in the whole town. People 
gave us directions, which we followed as best we could, gener- 
ally with the effect of bringing us out again upon the scene of 
our disgrace. We were very sad people indeed, by the time we 15 
had gone all over La Fere ; and the Cigarette had already made 
up his mind to lie under a poplar and sup off a loaf of bread. 
But right at the other end, the house next the towngate 
was full of light and bustle. "^^Bazin^ aubeigiste^ loge a pied^^ 
was the sign. "^ la Croix de MalteJ^ There were we 20 
received. 

The room was full of noisy reservists drinking and smoking ; 
and we were very glad indeed when the drums and bugles began 
to go about the streets, and one and all had to snatch shakoes 
and be off for the barracks. 25 

Bazin was a tall man, running to fat ; soft-spoken, with a 
delicate, gentle face. We asked him to share our wine ; but he 
excused himself, having pledged reservists all day long. This 
was a very different type of the workman-innkeeper from the 
bawling, disputatious fellow at Origny. He also loved Paris, 30 
where he had worked as a decorative painter in his youth. There 
were such opportunities for self-instruction there, he said. And 
if any one has read Zola's description of the workman's mar- 
riage party visiting the Louvre they would do well to have 



82 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

heard Bazin by way of antidote. He had delighted in the mu- 
seums in his youth. " One sees there little miracles of work," he 
said ; " that is what makes a good workman ; it kindles a 
spark." We asked him how he managed in La Fere. " I am 
5 married," he said, " and I have my pretty children. But 
frankly, it is no life at all. From morning to night I pledge a 
pack of good-enough fellows who know nothing." 

It faired as the night went on, and the moon came out of the 
clouds. We sat in front of the door, talking softly with Bazin. 

lo At the guardhouse opposite the guard was being forever turned 
out, as trains of field artillery kept clanking in out of the night 
or patrols of horsemen trotted by in their cloaks. Madame Ba- 
zin came out after a while ; she was tired with her day's work, 
I suppose ; and she nestled up to her husband and laid her 

15 head upon his breast. He had his arm about her and kept 
gently patting her on the shoulder. I think Ikzin was right, 
and he was really married. Of how few people can the same 
be said ! 

Little did the Bazins know how much they served us. We 

20 were charged for candles, for food and drink, and for the beds 
we slept in. But there was nothing in the bill for the husband's 
pleasant talk ; nor for the pretty spectacle of their married life. 
And there was yet another item uncharged. For these people's 
politeness really set us up again in our own esteem. We had a 

25 thirst for consideration ; the sense of insult was still hot in our 
spirits ; and civil usage seemed to restore us to our position in 
the world. 

How little we pay our way in life ! Although we have our 
purses continually in our hand, the better part of service goes 

30 still unrewarded. But I like to fancy that a grateful spirit gives 
as good as it gets. Perhaps the Bazins knew how much I liked 
them .? perhaps they, also, were healed of some slights by the 
thanks that I gave them in my manner ? 



DOWN THE OISE 
TJHROUGH THE GOLDEN VALLEY 

Below La Fere the river runs through a piece of open pastoral 
country ; green, opulent, loved by breeders ; called the Golden 
Valley. In wide sweeps, and with a swift and equable gallop, 
the ceaseless stream of water visits and makes green the fields. 
Kine, and horses, and little humorous donkeys browse together 5 
in the meadows, and come down in troops to the riverside to 
drink. They make a strange feature in the landscape ; above all 
when startled, and you see them galloping to and fro, with their 
incongruous forms and faces. It gives a feeling as of great, 
unfenced pampas, and the herds of wandering nations. There 10 
were hills in the distance upon either hand ; and on one side, 
the river sometimes bordered on the wooded spurs of Coucy 
and St. Gobain. 

The artillery were practicing at La Fere ; and soon the cannon 
of heaven joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud met 1 5 
and exchanged salvos overhead ; while all round the horizon we 
could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the 
guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden 
Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and running to 
and fro in timorous indecision ; and when they had made up 20 
their minds, and the donkey followed the horse, and the cow 
was after the donkey, we could hear their hoofs thundering 
abroad over the meadows. It had a martial sound, like cavalry 
charges. And altogether, as far as the ears are concerned, we 
had a very rousing battle piece performed for our amusement. 25 

At last, the guns and the thunder dropped off ; the sun shone 
on the wet meadows ; the air was scented with the breath of 

83 



84 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

rejoicing trees and grass ; and the river kept unweariedly carrying 
us on at its best pace. There was a manufacturing district about 
Chauny ; and after that the banks grew so high that they hid 
the adjacent country, and we could see nothing but clay sides, 
5 and one willow after another. Only here and there we passed 
by a village or a ferry, and some wondering child upon the bank 
would stare after us until we turned the corner. I dare say we 
continued to paddle in that child's dreams for many a night after. 
Sun and shower alternated like day and night, making the 

lo hours longer by their variety. When the showers were heavy 
I could feel each drop striking through my jersey to my warm 
skin ; and the accumulation of small shocks put me nearly be- 
side myself. I decided I should buy a mackintosh at Noyon. It 
is nothing to get wet ; but the misery of these individual pricks 

15 of cold all over my body at the same instant of time made me 
flail the water with my paddle like a madman. The Cigai'ette 
was greatly amused by these ebullitions. It gave him something 
else to look at besides clay banks and willows. 

All the time the river stole away like a thief in straight places, 

20 or swung round corners with an eddy ; the willows nodded and 
were undermined all day long ; the clay banks tumbled in ; the 
Oise, which had been so many centuries making the Golden 
Valley, seemed to have changed its fancy and be bent upon 
undoing its performance. What a number of things a river does 

25 by simply following Gravity in the innocence of its heart ! 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 

Noyon stands about a mile from the river, in a little plain sur- 
rounded by wooded hills, and entirely covers an eminence with 
its tile roofs, surmounted by a long, straight-backed cathedral 
with two stiff towers. As we got into the town, the tile roofs 
seemed to tumble uphill one upon another, in the oddest dis- 5 
order ; but for all their scrambling they did not attain above the 
knees of the cathedral, which stood, upright and solemn, over all. 
As the streets drew near to this presiding genius, through the 
market place under the Hotel de Ville, they grew emptier and 
more composed. Blank walls and shuttered windows were turned lo 
to the great edifice, and grass grew on the white causeway. " Put 
off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou stand- 
est is holy ground." The Hotel du Nord, nevertheless, lights 
its secular tapers within a stonecast of the church ; and we 
had the superb east end before our eyes all morning from the 15 
window of our bedroom. I have seldom looked on the east end 
of a church with more complete sympathy. As it fianges out 
in three wide terraces, and settles down broadly on the earth, 
it looks like the poop of some great old battleship. Hollow- 
backed buttresses carry vases, which figure for the stern Ian- 20 
terns. There is a roll in the ground, and the towers just appear 
above the pitch of the roof, as though the good ship were bow- 
ing lazily over an Atlantic swell. At any moment it might be a 
hundred feet away from you, climbing the next billow. At any 
moment a window might open, and some old admiral thrust 25 
forth a cocked hat and proceed to take an observation. The old 
admirals sail the sea no longer ; the old ships of battle are all 
broken up, and live only in pictures ; but this, that was a church 

85 



86 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

before ever they were thought upon, is still a church, and makes 
as brave an appearance by the Oise. The cathedral and the river 
are probably the two oldest things for miles around ; and cer- 
tainly they have both a grand old age. 
5 The Sacristan took us to the top of one of the towers, and 
showed us the five bells hanging in their loft. From above the 
town was a tessellated pavement of roofs and gardens ; the old 
line of rampart was plainly traceable ; and the Sacristan pointed 
out to us, far across the plain, in a bit of gleaming sky between 

lo two clouds, the towers of Chateau Coucy. 

I find I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind 
of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired 
as when it made a cathedral : a thing as single and specious as 
a statue to the first glance, and yet, on examination, as lively and 

1 5 interesting as a forest in detail. The height of spires cannot be 
taken by trigonometry ; they measure absurdly short, but how 
tall they are to the admiring eye ! And where we have so many 
elegant proportions, growing one out of the other, and all to- 
gether into one, it seems as if proportion transcended itself and 

20 became something different and more imposing. I could never 
fathom how a man dares to lift up his voice to preach in a cathe- 
dral. What is he to say that will not be an anticlimax } For 
though I have heard a considerable variety of sermons, I never 
yet heard one that was so expressive as a cathedral. 'T is the 

25 best preacher itself, and preaches day and night; not only tell- 
ing you of man's art and aspirations in the past, but convicting 
your own soul of ardent sympathies; or rather, like all good 
preachers, it sets you preaching to yourself, — and every man is 
his own doctor of divinity in the last resort. 

30 As I sat outside of the hotel in the course of the afternoon, 
the sweet, groaning thunder of the organ floated out of the 
church like a summons. I was not averse, liking the theater so 
well, to sit out an act or two of the play, but I could never 
rightly make out the nature of the service I beheld. Four or 



NOYON CATHEDRAL 8/ 

five priests and as many choristers were singing Miserere before 
the high altar when I went in. There was no congregation but 
a few old women on chairs and old men kneeling on the pave- 
ment. After a while a long train of young girls, walking two and 
two, each with a lighted taper in her hand, and all dressed in 5 
black with a white veil, came from behind the altar and began 
to descend the nave ; the four first carrying a Virgin and Child 
upon a table. The priests and choristers arose from their knees 
and followed after, singing "Ave Mary" as they went. In this 
order they made the circuit of the cathedral, passing twice before 10 
me where I leaned against a pillar. The priest who seemed of 
most consequence was a strange, down-looking old man. He 
kept mumbling prayers with his lips ; but, as he looked upon 
me darkling, it did not seem as if prayer were uppermost in his 
heart. Two others, who bore the burden of the chant, were 15 
stout, brutal, military-looking men of forty, with bold, overfed 
eyes ; they sang with some lustiness, and trolled forth ''Ave 
Mary" like a garrison catch. The little girls were timid and 
grave. As they footed slowly up the aisle, each one took a 
moment's glance at the Englishman ; and the big nun who 20 
played marshal fairly stared him out of countenance. As for 
the choristers, from first to last they misbehaved as only boys 
can misbehave, and cruelly marred the performance with their 
antics. 

I understood a great deal of the spirit of what went on. In- 25 
deed, it would be difficult not to understand the Miserere, which 
I take to be the composition of an atheist. If it ever be a good 
thing to take such despondency to heart, the Misei'ere is the right 
music and a cathedral a fit scene. So far I am at one with the 
Catholics, — an odd name for them, after all ! But why, in God's 30 
name, these holiday choristers .'' why these priests who steal wan- 
dering looks about the. congregation while they feign to be at 
prayer ? why this fat nun, who rudely arranges her procession 
and shakes delinquent virgins by the elbow .-* why this spitting 



88 AX INL.\ND VOYAGE 

and snuffing, and forgetting of keys, and the thousand and one 
little misadventures that disturb a frame of mind, laboriously 
edified \\-ith chants and organings ? In any playhouse reverend 
fathers may see what can be done with a litde art, and how, to 
5 move high sentiments, it is necessar}- to drill the supernumeraries 
and have even* stool in its proper place. 

One other circumstance distressed me, I could bear a Miserere 
myself. ha\-ing had a good deal of open-air exercise of late : but 
I ^^^shed the old people somewhere else. It was neither the right 

lo sort of music nor the right sort of di\-inity for men and women 
who have come through most accidents by this time, and prob- 
ably have an opinion of their own upon the tragic element in life. 
A person up in years can generally do his o\\-n Miserere for him- 
self ; although I notice that such an one often prefers Jubilate 

1 5 Deo for his ordinaiy singing. On the whole, the most religious 
exercise for the aged is probably to recall their on^ti experience ; 
so many friends dead, so many hopes disappointed, so many slips 
and stumbles, and withal so many bright days and smiling pro\-i- 
dences ; there is surely the matter of a ver}- eloquent sermon in 

2o all this. 

On the whole I was greatiy solemnized In the litde pictorial 
map of our whole Inland Voyage, which my fancy still preser\-es, 
and sometimes unrolls for the amusement of odd moments. 
Noyon cathedral figures on a most preposterous scale, and must 

-5 be nearly as large as the department I can still see the faces 
of the priests as if they were at my elbow, and hear Ave Maria, 
era pro rwHs soimding through the church. AU Xoyon is blotted 
out for me by these superior memories ; and I do not care to 
say more about the place. It was but a stack of brown roofs at 

30 the best, where I believe people live ven* reputably in a quiet 
way ; but the shadow of the church falls upon it when the sun 
is low, and the five beUs are heard in all quarters, telling that the 
organ has begun. If ever I join the church of Rome I shall 
stipulate to be Bishop of Xoyon on the Oise. 



DOWN THE OISE 
TO COMPIEGNE 

The most patient people grow weary at last with being con- 
tinually wetted with rain ; except, of course, in the Scotch High- 
lands, where there are not enough fine intervals to point the 
difference. That was like to be our case the day we left Noyon. 
I remember nothing of the voyage ; it was nothing but clay 5 
banks, and willows, and rain ; incessant, pitiless, beating rain ; 
until we stopped to lunch at a little inn at Pimprez, where the 
canal ran very near the river. We were so sadly drenched that 
the landlady lit a few sticks in the chimney for our comfort ; 
there we sat in a steam of vapor lamenting our concerns. 10 
The husband donned a game bag and strode out to shoot ; the 
wife sat in a far corner watching us. I think we were worth 
looking at. We grumbled over the misfortune of La Fere ; we 
forecast other La Feres in the future, — although things went 
better with the Cigarette for spokesman ; he had more aplomb 1 5 
altogether than I ; and a dull, positive way of approaching a 
landlady that carried off the india-rubber bags. Talking of La 
Fere put us talking of the reservists. 

" Reservery," said he, " seems a pretty mean way to spend 
one's autumn holiday." 20 

"About as mean," returned I, dejectedly, " as canoeing." 

'' These gentlemen travel for their pleasure t " asked the land- 
lady, with unconscious irony. 

It was too much. The scales fell from our eyes. Another 
wet day, it was determined, and we put the boats into 25 
the train. 

89 



90 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The weather took the hint. That was our last wetting. The 
afternoon faired up ; grand clouds still voyaged in the sky, but 
now singly, and with a depth of blue around their path ; and a 
sunset, in the daintiest rose and gold, inaugurated a thick night 
5 of stars and a month of unbroken weather. At the same time, 
the river began to give us a better outlook into the country. 
The banks were not so high, the willows disappeared from along 
the margin, and pleasant hills stood all along its course and 
marked their profile on the sky. 

lo In a little while the canal, coming to its last lock, began to 
discharge its waterhouses on the Oise ; so that we had no lack 
of company to fear. Here were all our old friends ; the Deo 
Gratias of Conde' and the Four Sons of Aymo?i journeyed 
cheerily down the stream along with us ; we exchanged water- 

1 5 side pleasantries with the steersman perched among the lumber, 
or the driver hoarse with bawling to his horses ; and the chil- 
dren came and looked over the side as we paddled by. We had 
never known all this while how much we missed them ; but it 
gave us a fillip to see the smoke from their chimneys. 

20 A little below this junction we made another meeting of yet 
more account. For there we were joined by the Aisne, already 
a far-traveled river and fresh out of Champagne. Here ended 
the adolescence of the Oise ; this w^as his marriage day ; thence- 
forward he had a stately, brimming march, conscious of his own 

25 dignity and sundry dams. He became a tranquil feature in the 
scene. The trees and towns saw themselves in him, as in a 
mirror. He carried the canoes lightly on his broad breast ; 
there was no need to work hard against an eddy, but idle- 
ness became the order of the day, and mere straightforward 

30 dipping of the paddle, now on this side, now on that, without 
intelligence or effort. Truly we were coming into halcyon 
weather upon all accounts, and were floated towards the sea 
like gentlemen. 



DOWN THE OISE 9I 

We made Compiegne as the sun was going down : a fine 
profile of a town above the river. Over the bridge a regiment 
was parading to the drum. People loitered on the quay, some 
fishing, some looking idly at the stream. And as the two boats 
shot in along the water, we could see them pointing them out 
and speaking one to another. We landed at a floating lavatory, 
where the washerwomen were still beating the clothes. 



AT COMPIEGNE 

We put up at a big, bustling hotel in Compiegne, where 
nobody observed our presence. 

Reservery and general militarismus (as the Germans call it) 
was rampant. A camp of conical white tents without the town 
5 looked like a leaf out of a picture Bible ; sword-belts decorated 
the walls of the cafes, and the streets kept sounding all day 
long with military music. It was not possible to be an English- 
man and avoid a feeling of elation ; for the men who followed 
the drums were small and walked shabbily. Each man inclined 

lo at his own angle, and jolted to his own convenience as he went. 
There was nothing of the superb gait with which a regiment of 
tall Highlanders moves behind its music, solemn and inevitable, 
like a natural phenomenon. Who, that has seen it, can forget 
the drum-major pacing in front, the drummers' tigerskins, the 

1 5 pipers' swinging plaids, the strange, elastic rhythm of the whole 
regiment footing it in time, and the bang of the drum when the 
brasses cease, and the shrill pipes taking up the martial story 
in their place ? 

A girl at school in France began to describe one of our regi- 

20 ments on parade to her French schoolmates, and as she went 
on, she told me the recollection grew so vivid, she became so 
proud to be the countrywoman of such soldiers, and so sorry to 
be in another country, that her voice failed her and she burst 
into tears. I have never forgotten that girl, and I think she 

25 very nearly deserves a statue. To call her a young lady, with 
all its niminy associations, would be to offer her an insult. She 
may rest assured of one thing, although she never should marry 
a heroic general, never see any great or immediate result of her 
life, she will not have lived in vain for her native land. 

92 



AT COMPIEGNE 93 

But though French soldiers show to ill advantage on parade, 
on the march they are gay, alert, and willing, like a troop of 
fox hunters. I remember once seeing a company pass through 
the forest of Fontainebleau, on the Chailly road, between the 
Bas Bre'au and the Reine Blanche. One fellow walked a little 5 
before the rest, and sang a loud, audacious marching song. 
The rest bestirred their feet, and even swung their muskets in 
time. A young officer on horseback had hard ado to keep his 
countenance at the words. You never saw anything so cheer- 
ful and spontaneous as their gait; schoolboys do not look 10 
more eagerly at hare and hounds ; and you would have thought 
it impossible to tire such willing marchers. 

My great delight in Compiegne was the town hall. I doted 
upon the town hall. It is a monument of Gothic insecurity, all 
turreted, and gargoyled, and slashed, and bedizened with half 15 
a score of architectural fancies. Some of the niches are gilt 
and painted ; and in a great square panel in the center, in black 
relief on a gilt ground, Louis XII rides upon a pacing horse, 
with hand on hip, and head thrown back. There is royal arro- 
gance in every line of him ; the stirruped foot projects inso- 20 
lently from the frame ; the eye is hard and proud ; the very 
horse seems to be treading with gratification over prostrate serfs, 
and to have the breath of the trumpet in his nostrils. So rides 
forever, on the front of the town hall, the good King Louis 
XII, the father of his people. 25 

Over the king's head, in the tall center turret, appears the dial 
of a clock ; and high above that, three little mechanical figures, 
each one with a hammer in his hand, whose business it is to 
chime out the hours, and halves, and quarters for the burgesses 
of Compiegne. The center figure has a gilt breastplate ; the two 30 
others wear gilt trunk hose ; and they all three have elegant, 
flapping hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches they 
turn their heads and look knowingly one to the other ; and then, 
kli?ig go the three hammers on three little bells below. The 



94 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower ; 
and the gilded gentlemen rest from their labors with contentment. 
I had a great deal of health and pleasure from their maneu- 
vers, and took good care to miss as few performances as possi- 

5 ble ; and I found that even the Cigarette, while he pretended to 
despise my enthusiasm, was more or less a devotee himself. 
There is something highly absurd in the exposition of such toys 
to the outrages of winter on a housetop. They would be more 
in keeping in a glass case before a Niirnberg clock. Above all, 

lo at night, when the children are abed, and even grown people 
are snoring under quilts, does it not seem impertinent to leave 
these gingerbread figures winking and tinkling to the stars and 
the rolling moon ? The gargoyles may fitly enough twist their 
apelike heads ; fitly enough may the potentate bestride his 

15 charger, like a centurion in an old German print of the Via 
Dolorosa; but the toys should be put away in a box among 
some cotton, until the sun rises, and the children are abroad 
again to be amused. 

In Compiegne post office a great packet of letters awaited us ; 

20 and the authorities were, for this occasion only, so polite as to 
hand them over upon application. 

In some way, our journey may be said to end with this letter 
bag at Compiegne. The spell was broken. We had partly come 
home from that moment. 

25 No one should have any correspondence on a journey ; it is 
bad enough to have to write ; but the receipt of letters is the 
death of all holiday feeling. 

'' Out of my country and myself I go." I wish to take a dive 
among new conditions for a while, as into another element. I 

30 have nothing to do with my friends or my affections for the 
time ; when I came away, I left my heart at home in a desk, or 
sent it forward with portmanteau to await me at my destina- 
tion. After my journey is over, I shall not fail to read your 
admirable letters with the attention they deserve. But I have 



AT COMPIEGNE 95 

paid all this money, look you, and paddled all these strokes, for 
no other purpose than to be abroad ; and yet you keep me at 
home with your perpetual communications. You tug the string, 
and I feel that I am a tethered bird. You pursue me all over 
Europe with the little 'vexations that I came away to avoid. 5 
There is no discharge in the war of life, I am well aware ; but 
shall there not be so much as a week's furlough ? 

We were up by six, the day we were to leave. They had taken 
so little note of us that I hardly thought they would have con- 
descended on a bill. But they did, with some smart particulars, 10 
too ; and we paid in a civilized manner to an uninterested clerk, 
and went out of that hotel, with the india-rubber bags, unre- 
marked. No one cared to know about us. It is not possible to 
rise before a village ; but Compiegne was so grown a town that 
it took its ease in the morning; and we were up and away 15 
while it was still in dressing gown and slippers. The streets 
were left to people washing doorsteps ; nobody was in full 
dress but the cavaliers upon the town hall ; they were all 
washed with dew, spruce in their gilding, and full of intelli- 
gence and a sense of professional responsibility. A7/;/^ went they 20 
on the bells for the half past six, as we went by. I took it 
kind of them to make me this parting compliment ; they never 
were in better form, not even at noon upon a Sunday. 

There was no one to see us off but the early washerwomen, 
— early and late, — who were already beating the linen in their 25 
floating lavatory on the river. They were very merry and ma- 
tutinal in their ways ; plunged their arms boldly in, and seemed 
not to feel the shock. It would be dispiriting to me, this early 
beginning and first cold dabble of a most dispiriting day's work. 
But I believe they would have been as unwilling to change days 30 
with us as we could be to change with them. They crowded to 
the door to watch us paddle away into the thin sunny mists 
upon the river ; and shouted heartily after us till we were 
through the bridge. 



CHANGED TIMES 

There is a sense in which those mists never rose from off our 
journey ; and from that time forth they lie very densely in my 
notebook. As long as the Oise was a small, rural river it took 
us near by people's doors, and we could hold a conversation 
5 with natives in the riparian fields. But now that it had grown 
so wide, the life alongshore passed us by at a distance. It was 
the same difference as beween a great public highway and a 
country bypath that wanders in and out of cottage gardens. 
We now lay in towns, where nobody troubled us with questions ; 

lo we had floated into civilized life, where people pass without sal- 
utation. In sparsely inhabited places we make all we can of 
each encounter ; but when it comes to a city, we keep to our- 
selves, and never speak unless we have trodden on a man's toes. 
In these waters we were no longer strange birds, and nobody 

15 supposed we had traveled farther than from the last town. I 
remember, when we came into L'Isle Adam, for instance, how 
we met dozens of pleasure boats outing it for the afternoon, and 
there was nothing to distinguish the true voyager from the am- 
ateur, except, perhaps, the filthy condition of my sail. The 

20 company in one boat actually thought they recognized me for a 
neighbor. Was there ever anything more wounding ? All the 
romance had come down to that. Now, on the upper Oise, 
where nothing sailed, as a general thing, but fish, a pair of 
canoeists could not be thus vulgarly explained away; we were 

25 strange and picturesque intruders ; and out of people's wonder 
sprang a sort of light and passing intimacy all along our route. 
There is nothing but tit for tat in this world, though sometimes 
it be a little difficult to trace : for the scores are older than we 

96 



CHANGED TIMES 97 

ourselves, and there has never yet been a settling day since things 
were. You get entertainment pretty much in proportion as you 
give. As long as we were a sort of odd wanderers, to be stared at 
and followed like a quack doctor or a caravan, we had no want of 
amusement in return ; but as soon as we sank into commonplace 5 
ourselves, all whom we met were similarly disenchanted. And here 
is one reason of a dozen why the world is dull to dull persons. 

In our earlier adventures there was generally something to 
do, and that quickened us. Even the showers of rain had a 
revivifying effect, and shook up the brain from torpor. But now, 10 
when the river no longer ran in a proper sense, only glided sea- 
ward with an even, outright, but imperceptible speed, and when 
the sky smiled upon us day after day without variety, we began 
to slip into that golden doze of the mind which follows upon 
much exercise in the open air. I have stupefied myself in this 15 
way more than once : indeed, I dearly love the feeling ; but I 
never had it to the same degree as when paddling down the 
Oise. It was the apotheosis of stupidity. 

We ceased reading entirely. Sometimes, when I found a new 
paper, I took a particular pleasure in reading a single number 20 
of the current novel ; but I never could bear more than three 
installments ; and even the second was a disappointment. As 
soon as the tale became in any way perspicuous, it lost all merit 
in my eyes ; only a single scene, or, as is the way with these 
feuilletons, half a scene, without antecedent or consequence, like 25 
a piece of a dream, had the knack of fixing my interest. The 
less I saw of the novel the better I liked it : a pregnant reflec- 
tion. But for the most part, as I said, we neither of us read any- 
thing in the world, and employed the very little while we were 
awake between bed and dinner in poring upon maps. I have 30 
always been fond of maps, and can voyage in an atlas with the 
greatest enjoyment. The names of places are singularly invit- 
ing ; the contour of coasts and rivers is enthralling to the eye ; 
and to hit in a map upon some place you have heard of before 



98 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

makes history a new possession. But we thumbed our charts, on 
those evenings, with the blankest unconcern. We cared not a 
fraction for this place or that. We stared at the sheet as children 
listen to their rattle, and read the names of towns or villages to 
5 forget them again at once. We had no romance in the matter ; 
there was nobody so fancy-free. If you had taken the maps 
away while we were studying them most intently, it is a fair bet 
whether we might not have continued to study the table with 
the same delight. 

10 About one thing we were mightily taken up, and that was eat- 
ing. I think I made a god of my belly. I remember dwelling in 
imagination upon this or that dish till my mouth watered ; and 
long before we got in for the night my appetite was a clamant, 
instant annoyance. Sometimes we paddled alongside for a while 

15 and whetted each other with gastronomical fancies as we went. 
Cake and sherry, a homely refection, but not within reach upon 
the Oise, trotted through my head for many a mile ; and once, 
as we were approaching Verberie, the Cigarette brought my heart 
into my mouth by the suggestion of oyster patties and Sauterne. 

20 I suppose none of us recognize the great part that is played 
in life by eating and drinking. The appetite is so imperious that 
we can stomach the least interesting viands, and pass off a dinner 
hour thankfully enough on bread and water ; just as there are 
men who must read something, if it were only Bradshaw's 

25 Guide. But there is a romance about the matter, after all. 
Probably the table has more devotees than love ; and I am sure 
that food is much more generally entertaining than scenery. 
Do you give in, as Walt W' hitman would say, that you are any 
the less immortal for that? The true materialism is to be 

30 ashamed of what we are. To detect the flavor of an olive is 
no less a piece of human perfection than to find beauty in the 
colors of the sunset. 

Canoeing was easy work. To dip the paddle at the proper 
inclination, now right, now left ; to keep the head downstream ; 



CHANGED TLMES 99 

to empty the little pool that gathered in the lap of the apron ; 
to screw up the eyes against the glittering sparkles of sun upon 
the water ; or now and again to pass below the whistling tow- 
rope of the Deo Gratia s of Conde' or Four Soiis of Aymon, — 
there was not much art in that ; certain silly muscles managed 5 
it between sleep and waking ; and meanwhile the brain had a 
whole holiday, and went to sleep. We took in at a glance the 
larger features of the scene, and beheld, with half an eye, 
bloused fishers and dabbling washerwomen on the bank. Now 
and again we might be half wakened by some church spire, by 10 
a leaping fish, or by a trail of river grass that clung about the 
paddle and had to be plucked off and thrown away. But these 
luminous intervals were only partially luminous. A little more 
of us was called into action, but never the whole. The central 
bureau of nerves, what in some moods we call Ourselves, en- 15 
joyed its holiday without disturbance, like a Government Office. 
The great wheels of intelligence turned idly in the head, like fly- 
wheels, grinding no grist. I have gone on for half an hour at 
a time, counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I 
flatter myself the beasts that perish could not underbid that, as 20 
a low form of consciousness. And what a pleasure it was ! 
What a hearty, tolerant temper did it bring about ! There is 
nothing captious about a man who has attained to this, the one 
possible apotheosis in life, the Apotheosis of Stupidity ; and he 
begins to feel dignified and longevous like a tree. 25 

There was one odd piece of practical metaphysics which ac- 
companied what I may call the depth, if I must not call it the 
intensity, of my abstraction. What philosophers call vie and not 
me^ ego and non ego, preoccupied me whether I would or no. 
There was less 7ne and more not vie than I was accustomed to 30 
expect. I looked on upon somebody else, who managed the 
paddling; I was aware of somebody else's feet against the 
stretcher ; my own body seemed to have no more intimate re- 
lation to me than the canoe, or the river, or the river banks. 



lOO AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Nor this alone : something inside my mind, a part of my brain, 
a province of my proper being, had thrown off allegiance and 
set up for itself, or perhaps for the somebody else who did the 
paddling. I had dwindled into quite a little thing in a corner of 
5 myself. I was isolated in my own skull. Thoughts presented 
themselves unbidden ; they were not my thoughts, they were 
plainly some one else's ; and I considered them like a part of 
the landscape. I take it, in short, that I was about as near 
Nir\^ana as w^ould be convenient in practical life ; and, if this 

lo be so, I make the Buddhists my sincere compliments; 'tis an 
agreeable state, not very consistent with mental brilliancy, not 
exactly profitable in a money point of view, but very calm, 
golden, and incurious, and one that sets a man superior to 
alarms. It may be best figured by supposing yourself to get 

15 dead drunk, and yet keep sober to enjoy it. I have a notion 
that open-air laborers must spend a large portion of their days 
in this ecstatic stupor, which explains their high composure and 
endurance. A pity to go to the expense of laudanum when here 
is a better paradise for nothing ! 

20 This frame of mind was the great exploit of our voyage, take 
it all in all. It w^as the farthest piece of travel accomplished. 
Indeed, it lies so far from beaten paths of language that I de- 
spair of getting the reader into sympathy with the smiling, com- 
placent idiocy of my condition ; when ideas came and went like 

25 motes in a sunbeam ; when trees and church spires along the 
bank surged up from time to time into my notice, like solid 
objects through a rolling cloudland ; when the rhythmical swish 
of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle song to lull my 
thoughts asleep ; when a piece of mud on the deck was some- 

30 times an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion 
for me, and the object of pleased consideration ; and all the time, 
with the river running and the shores changing upon either hand, 
I kept counting my strokes and forgetting the hundreds, the 
happiest animal in France. 



DOWN THE OISE 

CHURCH INTERIORS 

We made our first stage below Compiegne to Pont Sainte- 
Maxence. I was abroad a little after six the next morning. 
The air was biting and smelt of frost. In an open place a score 
of women wrangled together over the day's market ; and the 
noise of their negotiation sounded thin and querulous, like that 5 
of sparrows on a winter's morning. The rare passengers blew 
into their hands, and shuffled in their wooden shoes to set the 
blood agog. The streets were full of icy shadow, although the 
chimneys were smoking overhead in golden sunshine. If you 
wake early enough at this season of the year, you may get up 10 
in December to break your fast in June. 

I found my way to the church, for there is always some- 
thing to see about a church, whether living worshipers or dead 
men's tombs ; you find there the deadliest earnest, and the 
hollowest deceit ; and even where it is not a piece of history, 1 5 
it will be certain to leak out some contemporary gossip. It was 
scarcely so cold in the church as it was without, but it looked 
colder. The white nave was positively arctic to the eye ; and 
the tawdriness of a continental altar looked more forlorn than 
usual in the solitude and the bleak air. Two priests sat in the 20 
chancel reading and waiting penitents ; and out in the nave one 
very old woman was engaged in her devotions. It was a wonder 
how she was able to pass her beads when healthy young people 
were breathing in their palms and slapping their chest ; but 
though this concerned me, I was yet more dispirited by the 25 
nature of her exercises. She went from chair to chair, from 
altar to altar, circumnavigating the church. To each shrine she 

lOI 



I02 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

dedicated an equal number of beads and an equal length of 
time. Like a prudent capitalist with a somewhat cynical view 
of the commercial prospect, she desired to place her supplica- 
tions in a great variety of heavenly securities. She would risk 
5 nothing on the credit of any single intercessor. Out of the 
whole company of saints and angels, not one but was to sup- 
pose himself her champion elect against the Great Assizes ! I 
could only think of it as a dull, transparent jugglery, based 
upon unconscious unbelief. 

lo She was as dead an old woman as ever I saw ; no more than 
bone and parchment, curiously put together. Her eyes, with 
which she interrogated mine, were vacant of sense. It depends 
on what you call seeing, whether you might not call her blind. 
Perhaps she had known love : perhaps borne children, suckled 

15 them, and given them pet names. But now that was all gone 
by, and had left her neither happier nor wiser ; and the best 
she could do with her mornings was to come up here into the 
cold church and juggle for a slice of heaven. It was not with- 
out a gulp that I escaped into the streets and the keen morn- 

20 ing air. Morning.'* why, how tired of it she would be before 
night ! and if she did not sleep, how then ? It is fortunate that 
not many of us are brought up publicly to justify our lives at 
the bar of threescore years and ten ; fortunate that such a 
number are knocked opportunely on the head in what they call 

25 the flower of their years, and go away to suffer for their follies 
in private somewhere else. Otherwise, between sick children 
and discontented old folk, we might be put out of all conceit 
of life. 

I had need of all my cerebral hygiene during that day's 

30 paddle : the old devotee stuck in my throat sorely. But I was 
soon in the seventh heaven of stupidity ; and knew nothing but 
that somebody was paddling a canoe, while I was counting his 
strokes and forgetting the hundreds. I used sometimes to be 
afraid I should remember the hundreds ; which would have 



DOWN THE OlSE 103 

made a toil of a pleasure ; but the terror was chimerical, they 
went out of my mind by enchantment, and I knew no more 
than the man in the moon about my only occupation. 

At Creil, where we stopped to lunch, we left the canoes in 
another floating lavatory, which, as it was high noon, was packed 5 
with washerwomen, red-handed and loud-voiced ; and they and 
their broad jokes are about all I remember of the place. I 
could look up my history books, if you were very anxious, and 
tell you a date or two ; for it figured rather largely in the Eng- 
lish wars. But I prefer to mention a girls' boarding school, 10 
which had an interest for us because it was a girls' boarding 
school, and because we imagined we had rather an interest for it. 
At least, there were the girls about the garden ; and here were 
we on the river ; and there was more than one handkerchief 
waved as we went by. It caused quite a stir in my heart ; and 1 5 
yet how we should have wearied and despised each other, these 
girls and I, if we had been introduced at a croquet party ! But 
this is a fashion I love : to kiss the hand or wave a handkerchief 
to people I shall never see again, to play with possibility, and 
knock in a peg for fancy to hang upon. It gives the traveler a 20 
jog, reminds him that he is not a traveler everywhere, and that 
his journey is no more than a siesta by the way on the real 
march of life. 

The church at Creil was a nondescript place in the inside, 
splashed with gaudy lights from the windows, and picked out 25 
with medallions of the Dolorous Way. But there was one odd- 
ity, in the way of an ex voto, which pleased me hugely : a faith- 
ful model of a canal boat, swung from the vault, with a written 
aspiration that God should conduct the Saint Nicholas of Creil 
to a good haven. The thing was neatly executed, and would 30 
have made the delight of a party of boys on the waterside. 
But what tickled me was the gravity of the peril to be conjured. 
You might hang up the model of a seagoing ship, and welcome : 
one that is to plow a furrow round the world, and visit the 



I04 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

tropic or the frosty poles, runs dangers that are well worth 
a candle and a mass. But the Saint Nicholas of Creil, which 
was to be tugged for some ten years by patient draft horses, 
in a weedy canal, with the poplars chattering overhead, and the 
5 skipper whistling at the tiller; which was to do all its errands 
in green inland places, and never go out of sight of a village 
belfry in all its cruising ; why, you would have thought if any- 
thing could be done without the intervention of Providence, it 
would be that ! But perhaps the skipper was a humorist : or 

lo perhaps a prophet, reminding people of the seriousness of life 
by this preposterous token. 

At Creil, as at Noyon, St. Joseph seemed a favorite saint on 
the score of punctuality. Day and hour can be specified ; and 
grateful people do not fail to specify them on a votive tablet, 

1 5 when prayers have been punctually and neatly answered. When- 
ever time is a consideration, St. Joseph is the proper interme- 
diary. I took a sort of pleasure in observing the vogue he had 
in France, for the good man plays a very small part in my re- 
ligion at home. Yet I could not help fearing that, where the 

20 saint is so much commended for exactitude, he will be expected 
to be very grateful for his tablet. 

This is foolishness to us Protestants ; and not of great im- 
portance anyway. Whether people's gratitude for the good 
gifts that come to them be wisely conceived or dutifully ex- 

25 pressed is a secondary matter, after all, so long as they feel 
gratitude. The true ignorance is when a man does not know 
that he has received a good gift, or begins to imagine that he 
has got it for himself. The self-made man is the funniest wind- 
bag after all ! There is a marked difference between decreeing 

30 light in chaos, and lighting the gas in a metropolitan back parlor 

with a box of patent matches ; and, do what we will, there is 

always something made to our hand, if it were only our fingers. 

But there was something worse than foolishness placarded 

in Creil Church. The Association of the Living Rosary (of 



DOWN THE OISE 105 

which I had never previously heard) is responsible for that. 
This association was founded, according to the printed adver- 
tisement, by a brief of Pope Gregory Sixteenth, on the 17 th 
of January, 1832 : according to a colored bas-relief, it seems to 
have been founded, some time or other, by the Virgin giving 5 
one rosary to St. Dominic, and the Infant Savior giving another 
to St. Catherine of Siena. Pope Gregory is not so imposing, 
but he is nearer hand. I could not distinctly make out whether 
the association was entirely devotional, or had an eye to good 
works ; at least it is highly organized : the names of fourteen 10 
matrons and misses were filled in for each week of the month 
as associates, with one other, generally a married woman, at 
the top for Zelafrice, the choragus of the band. Indulgences, 
plenary and partial, follow on the performance of the duties of 
the association. " The partial indulgences are attached to the 1 5 
recitation of the rosary." On '' the recitation of the required 
dizaine,^^ a partial indulgence promptly follows. When people 
serve the kingdom of Heaven with a pass book in their hands, 
I should always be afraid lest they should carry the same com- 
mercial spirit into their dealings with their fellow men, which 20 
would make a sad and sordid business of this life. 

There is one more article, however, of happier import. "All 
these indulgences," it appeared, '' are applicable to souls in pur- 
gatory." For God's sake, ye ladies of Creil, apply them all to 
the souls in purgatory without delay! Burns would take no 25 
hire for his last songs, preferring to serve his country out of 
unmixed love. Suppose you were to imitate the exciseman, 
mesdames, and even if the souls in purgatory were not greatly 
bettered, some souls in Creil upon the Oise would find them- 
selves none the worse either here or hereafter. 30 

I cannot help wondering, as I transcribe these notes, whether 
a Protestant born and bred is in a fit state to understand these 
signs, and do them what justice they deserve ; and I cannot 
help answering that he is not. They cannot look so merely 



I06 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

ugly and mean to the faithful as they do to me. I see that 
as clearly as a proposition in Euclid. For these believers are 
neither weak nor wicked. They can put up their tablet com- 
mending St. Joseph for his dispatch as if he were still a village 
5 carpenter ; they can " recite the required dizaine,'' and meta- 
phorically pocket the indulgences as if they had done a job for 
heaven ; and then they can go out and look down unabashed 
upon this wonderful river flowing by, and up without confusion 
at the pin-point stars, which are themselves great worlds full of 

lo flowing rivers greater than the Oise. I see it as plainly, I say, 
as a proposition in Euclid, that my Protestant mind has missed 
the point, and that there goes with these deformities some 
higher and more religious spirit than I dream. 

I wonder if other people would make the same allowances 

1 5 for me 1 Like the ladies of Creil, having recited my rosary of 
toleration, I look for my indulgence on the spot. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 

We made Precy about sundown. The plain is rich with tufts 
of poplar. In a wide, luminous curve the Oise lay under the 
hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the different 
distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of 
the sheep bells in some meadows by the river, and the creak- 5 
ing of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The 
villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to 
have been deserted the day before ; and I felt inclined to walk 
discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden we 
came round a corner, and there, in a little green round the 10 
church, was a bevy of girls in Parisian costumes playing croquet. 
Their laughter and the hollow sound of ball and mallet made 
a cheery stir in the neighborhood ; and the look of these slim 
figures, all corseted and ribboned, produced an answerable dis- 
turbance in our hearts. We were within sniff of Paris, it seemed. 1 5 
And here were females of our own species playing croquet, 
just as if Precy had been a place in real life instead of a stage 
in the fairyland of travel. For, to be frank, the peasant woman 
is scarcely to be counted as a woman at all, and after having 
passed by such a succession of people in petticoats digging, and 20 
hoeing, and making dinner, this company of coquettes under 
arms made quite a surprising feature in the landscape, and con- 
vinced us at once of being fallible males. 

The inn at Precy is the worst inn in France. Not even in 
Scodand have I found worse fare. It was kept by a brother 25 
and sister, neither of whom was out of their teens. The sister, 
so to speak, prepared a meal for us ; and the brother, who had 
been tippling, came in and brought with him a tipsy butcher, to 

107 



I08 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

entertain us as we ate. We found pieces of loo-warm pork 
among the salad, and pieces of unknown yielding substance in 
the ragoiit. The butcher entertained us with pictures of Pari- 
sian life, with which he professed himself well acquainted ; the 
5 brother sitting the while on the edge of the billiard table, toppling 
precariously, and sucking the stump of a cigar. In the midst of 
these diversions bang went a drum past the house, and a hoarse 
voice began issuing a proclamation. It was a man with mario- 
nettes announcing a performance for that evening. 

lo He had set up his caravan and lighted his candles on another 
part of the girls' croquet green, under one of those open sheds 
which are so common in France to shelter markets ; and he 
and his wife, by the time we strolled up there, were trying to 
keep order with the audience. 

15 It was the most absurd contention. The show people had 
set out a certain number of benches ; and all who sat upon 
them were to pay a couple of sous for the accommodation. They 
were always quite full — a bumper house — as long as nothing 
was going forward ; but let the show woman appear with an 

20 eye to a collection, and at the first rattle of the tambourine the 
audience slipped off the seats and stood round on the outside, 
with their hands in their pockets. It certainly would have tried 
an angel's temper. The showman roared from the proscenium ; 
he had been all over France, and nowhere, nowhere, " not even 

25 on the borders of Germany," had he met with such misconduct. 
Such thieves, and rogues, and rascals as he called them ! And 
now and again the wife issued on another round, and added her 
shrill quota to the tirade. I remarked here, as elsewhere, how 
far more copious is the female mind in the material of insult. 

30 The audience laughed in high good humor over the man's dec- 
lamations ; but they bridled and cried aloud under the woman's 
pungent sallies. She picked out the sore points. She had the 
honor of the village at her mercy. Voices answered her angrily 
out of the crowd, and received a smarting retort for their 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 109 

trouble. A couple of old ladies beside me, who had duly paid 
for their seats, waxed very red and indignant, and discoursed to 
each other audibly about the impudence of these mountebanks ; 
but as soon as the show woman caught a whisper of this she 
was down upon them with a swoop ; if mesdames could per- 5 
suade their neighbors to act with common honesty, the mounte- 
banks, she assured them, would be polite enough ; mesdames 
had probably had their bowl of soup, and, perhaps, a glass of 
wine that evening ; the mountebanks, also, had a taste for soup, 
and did not choose to have their little earnings stolen from 10 
them before their eyes. Once, things came as far as a brief 
personal encounter between the showman and some lads, in 
which the former went down as readily as one of his own 
marionettes to a peal of jeering laughter. 

I was a good deal astonished at this scene, because I am 15 
pretty well acquainted with the ways of French strollers, more or 
less artistic ; and have always found them singularly pleasing. 
Any stroller must be dear to the right-thinking heart ; if it were 
only as a living protest against offices and the mercantile spirit, 
and as something to remind us that life is not by necessity the 20 
kind of thing we generally make it. Even a German band, if 
you see it leaving town in the early morning for a campaign in 
country places, among trees and meadows, has a romantic flavor 
for the imagination. There is nobody under thirty so dead but 
his heart will stir a little at sight of a gypsies' camp. " We are 25 
not cotton spinners all " ; or, at least, not all through. There is 
some life in humanity yet ; and youth will now and again find 
a brave word to say in dispraise of riches, and throw up a situ- 
ation to go strolling with a knapsack. 

An Englishman has always special facilities for intercourse 30 
with French gymnasts ; for England is the natural home of gym- 
nasts. This or that fellow, in his tights and spangles, is sure to 
know a word or two of English, to have drunk English aff-n-aff, 
and, perhaps, performed in an English music hall. He is a 



no AN INLAND VOYAGE 

countryman of mine by profession. He leaps like the Belgian 
boating men to the notion that I must be an athlete myself. 

But the gymnast is not my favorite ; he has little or no tinc- 
ture of the artist in his composition ; his soul is small and pedes- 
5 trian, for the most part, since his profession makes no call upon 
it, and does not accustom him to high ideas. But if a man is 
only so much of an actor that he can stumble through a farce, 
he is made free of a new order of thoughts. He has something 
else to think about beside the money box. He has a pride 

lo of his own, and, what is of far more importance, he has an aim 
before him that he can never quite attain. He has gone upon a 
pilgrimage that will last him his life long, because there is no 
end to it short of perfection. He will better himself a little day 
by day ; or, even if he has given up the attempt, he will always 

15 remember that once upon a time he had conceived this high 
ideal, that once upon a time he fell in love with a star. " 'T is 
better to have loved and lost." Although the moon should have 
nothing to say to Endymion, although he should settle down 
with Audrey and feed pigs, do you not think he would move 

20 with a better grace and cherish higher thoughts to the end ? 
The louts he meets at church never had a fancy above Audrey's 
snood; but there is a reminiscence in Endymion's heart that, 
like a spice, keeps it fresh and haughty. 

To be even one of the outskirters of art leaves a fine stamp 

25 on a man's countenance. I remember once dining with a party 
in the inn at Chateau Landon. Most of them were unmistak- 
able bagmen ; others well-to-do peasantry ; but there was one 
young fellow in a blouse, whose face stood out from among the 
rest surprisingly. It looked more finished ; more of the spirit 

30 looked out through it ; it had a living, expressive air, and you 
could see that his eyes took things in. My companion and I 
wondered greatly who and what he could be. It was fair 
time in Chateau Landon, and when we went along to the 
booths we had our question answered ; for there was our 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES III 

friend busily fiddling for the peasants to caper to. He was 
a wandering violinist. 

A troop of strollers once came to the inn where I was stay- 
ing, in the department of Seine-et-Marne. There were a father 
and mother ; two daughters, brazen, blowsy hussies, who sang 5 
and acted, without an idea of how to set about either ; and a 
dark young man, like a tutor, a recalcitrant house painter, who 
sang and acted not amiss. The mother was the genius of the 
party, so far as genius can be spoken of with regard to such a 
pack of incompetent humbugs ; and her husband could not find lo 
words to express his admiration for her comic countryman. 
" You should see my old woman," said he, and nodded his 
beery countenance. One night they performed in the stable 
yard with flaring lamps : a wretched exhibition, coldly looked 
upon by a village audience. Next night, as soon as the lamps 15 
were lighted, there came a plump of rain, and they had to 
sweep away their baggage as fast as possible, and make off to 
the barn, where they harbored, cold, wet, and supperless. In the 
morning a dear friend of mine, who has as warm a heart for 
strollers as I have myself, made a little collection, and sent it 20 
by my hands to comfort them for their disappointment. I gave 
it to the father ; he thanked me cordially, and we drank a cup 
together in the kitchen, talking of roads and audiences, and 
hard times. 

When I was going, up got my old stroller, and off with his 25 
hat. '' I am afraid," said he, " that Monsieur will think me alto- 
gether a beggar; but I have another demand to make upon 
him." I began to hate him on the spot. '' We play again to- 
night," he went on. " Of course I shall refuse to accept any 
more money from Monsieur and his friends, who have been 30 
already so liberal. But our program of to-night is something 
truly creditable ; and I cling to the idea that Monsieur will 
honor us with his presence." And then, with a shrug and a 
smile : '^ Monsieur understands, — the vanity of an artist ! " 



112 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Save the mark ! The vanity of an artist ! That is the kind of thing 
that reconciles me to life : a ragged, tippling, incompetent old 
rogue, with the manners of a gentleman and the vanity of an 
artist, to keep up his self-respect ! 
5 But the man after my own heart is M. de Vauversin. It is 
nearly two years since I saw him first, and indeed I hope I may 
see him often again. Here is his first program as I found it 
on the breakfast table, and have kept it ever since as a relic of 
bright days : 

lo " Mesdames et Messieurs, 

" Mademoiselle Ferrario et M. de Vauversin auront I'honneur de 
chanter ce soir les morceaux suivants. 

''■Mademoiselle Ferrario chantera — Mignon — Oiseaux Legers — 
France — Des Fran9ais dorment la — le chateau bleu — Ou voulez-vous 
15 aller? 

" M. de Vauversin — Madame Fontaine et M. Robinet— Les plon- 
geurs a cheval — Le Mari mecontent — Tais-toi, gamin — Mon voisin 
I'original — Heureux comme 9a — comme on est trompe." 

They made a stage at one end of the saUe-a-manger. And 

20 what a sight it was to see M. de Vauversin, with a cigarette in 
his mouth, twanging a guitar, and following Mademoiselle 
Ferrario's eyes with the obedient, kindly look of a dog ! The 
entertainment wound up with a tombola, or auction of lottery 
tickets : an admirable amusement, with all the excitement of 

25 gambling, and no hope of gain to make you asha;ned of your 
eagerness ; for there, all is loss ; you make haste to be out of 
pocket ; it is a competition who shall lose most money for the 
benefit of M. de Vauversin and Mademoiselle Ferrario. 

M. de Vauversin is a small man, with a great head of black 

30 hair, a vivacious and engaging air, and a smile that would be 
delightful if he had better teeth. He was once an actor in the 
Chatelet ; but he contracted a nervous affection from the heat 
and glare of the footlights, which unfitted him for the stage. 
At this crisis Mademoiselle Ferrario, otherwise Mademoiselle 

35 Rita of the Alcazar, agreed to share his wandering fortunes. 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 113 

" I could never forget the generosity of that lady," said he. He 
wears trousers so tight that it has long been a problem to all 
who knew him how he manages to get in and out of them. He 
sketches a little in water colors, he writes verses ; he is the most 
patient of fishermen, and spent long days at the bottom of the 5 
inn garden fruitlessly dabbling a line in the clear river. 

You should hear him recounting his experiences over a bot- 
tle of wine ; such a pleasant vein of talk as he has, with a ready 
smile at his own mishaps, and every now and then a sudden 
gravity, like a man who should hear the surf roar while he was 10 
telling the perils of the deep. For it was no longer ago than 
last night, perhaps, that the receipts only amounted to a franc 
and a half to cover three francs of railway fare and two of 
board and lodging. The Maire, a man worth a million of 
money, sat in the front seat, repeatedly applauding Mademoi- 15 
selle Ferrario, and yet gave no more than three sous the whole 
evening. Local authorities look with such an evil eye upon the 
strolling artist. Alas ! I know it well, who have been myself 
taken for one, and pitilessly incarcerated on the strength of the 
misapprehension. Once, M. de Vauversin visited a commissary 20 
of police for permission to sing. The commissary, who was 
smoking at his ease, politely doffed his hat upon the singer's 
entrance. '' Mr. Commissary," he began, " I am an artist." 
And on went the commissary's hat again. No courtesy for the 
companions of Apollo ! '' They are as degraded as that," said 25 
M. de Vauversin, with a sweep of his cigarette. 

But what pleased me most was one outbreak of his, when we 
had been talking all the evening of the rubs, indignities, and 
pinchings of his wandering life. Some one said it would be 
better to have a million of money down, and Mademoiselle 30 
Ferrario admitted that she would prefer that mightily. ''£/i bien, 
moi 71071 ; — not I," cried De Vauversin, striking the table with 
his hand. " If any one is a failure in the world, is it not 1 1 I 
had an art, in which I have done things well, — as well as some, 



114 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

better, perhaps, than others ; and now it is closed against me. I 
must go about the country gathering coppers and singing non- 
sense. Do you think I regret my life ? Do you think I would 
rather be a fat burgess, like a calf ? Not I ! I have had mo- 
5 ments when I have been applauded on the boards : I think 
nothing of that : but I have known in my own mind some- 
times, when I had not a clap from the whole house, that I had 
found a true intonation, or an exact and speaking gesture ; and 
then, messieurs, I have known what pleasure was, what it was 

10 to do a thing well, what it was to be an artist. And to know what 
art is, is to have an interest forever, such as no burgess can find 
in his petty concerns. Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire, — it 
is like a religion." 

Such, making some allowance for the tricks of memory and 

15 the inaccuracies of translation, was the profession of faith of M. 
de Vauversin. I have given him his own name, lest any other 
wanderer should come across him, with his guitar and cigarette, 
and Mademoiselle Ferrario ; for should not all the world delight 
to honor this unfortunate and loyal follower of the Muses ? 

20 May Apollo send him rimes hitherto undreamed of; may 
the river be no longer scanty of her silver fishes to his lure ; 
may the cold not pinch him on long winter rides, nor the village 
jack-in-office affront him with unseemly manners ; and may he 
never miss Mademoiselle Ferrario from his side, to follow with 

25 his dutiful eyes and accompany on the guitar ! 

The marionettes made a very dismal entertainment. They 
performed a piece called PyTamus and Thishe, in five mortal 
acts, and all written in Alexandrines fully as long as the per- 
formers. One marionette was the king ; another the wicked 

30 counselor ; a third, credited with exceptional beauty, represented 
Thisbe ; and then there were guards, and obdurate fathers, and 
walking gentlemen. Nothing particular took place during the 
two or three acts that I sat out; but you will be pleased to 
learn that the unities were properly respected, and the whole 



PRECY AND THE MARIONETTES 115 

piece, with one exception, moved in harmony with classical 
rules. That exception was the comic countryman, a lean mario- 
nette in wooden shoes, who spoke in prose and in a broad patois 
much appreciated by the audience. He took unconstitutional 
liberties with the person of his sovereign ; kicked his fellow 5 
marionettes in the mouth with his wooden shoes, and whenever 
none of the versifying suitors were about, made love to Thisbe 
on his own account in comic prose. 

This fellow's evolutions, and the little prologue, in which the 
showman made a humorous eulogium of his troop, praising their 10 
indifference to applause and hisses, and their single devotion to 
their art, were the only circumstances in the whole affair that 
you could fancy would so much as raise a smile. But the vil- 
lagers of Precy seemed delighted. Indeed, so long as a thing is 
an exhibition, and you pay to see it, it is nearly certain to 15 
amuse. If we were charged so much a head for sunsets, or if 
God sent round a drum before the hawthorns came in flower, 
what work should we not make about their beauty ! But these 
things, like good companions, stupid people early cease to ob- 
serve ; and the Abstract Bagman tittups past in his spring gig, 20 
and is postively not aware of the flowers along the lane, or 
the scenery of the weather overhead. 



BACK TO THE WORLD 

Of the next two days' sail little remains in my mind, and 
nothing whatever in my notebook. The river streamed on 
steadily through pleasant riverside landscapes. Washerwomen 
in blue dresses, fishers in blue blouses, diversified the green 
5 banks ; and the relation of the two colors was like that of the 
flower and the leaf in the forget-me-not. A symphony in forget- 
me-not ; I think Theophile Gautier might thus have character- 
ized that two days' panorama. The sky was blue and cloudless ; 
and the sliding surface of the river held up, in smooth places, 

10 a mirror to the heaven and the shores. The washerwomen 
hailed us laughingly ; and the noise of trees and water made 
an accompaniment to our dozing thoughts, as we fleeted down 
the stream. 

The great volume, the indefatigable purpose of the river, 

15 held the mind in chain. It seemed now so sure of its end, so 
strong and easy in its gait, like a grown man full of determina- 
tion. The surf was roaring for it on the sands of Havre. For 
my own part slipping along this moving thoroughfare in my 
fiddle case of a canoe, I also was beginning to grow aweary for 

20 my ocean. To the civilized man there must come, sooner or 
later, a desire for civilization. I was weary of dipping the 
paddle ; I was weary of living on the skirts of life ; I wished 
to be in the thick of it once more ; I wished to get to work ; 
I wished to meet people who understood my own speech, and 

25 could meet with me on equal terms, as a man, and no longer 
as a curiosity. 

And so a letter at Pontoise decided us, and we drew up 
our keels for the last time out of that river of Oise that had 

116 



BACK TO THE WORLD 11/ 

faithfully piloted them, through rain and sunshine, for so long. 
For so many miles had this fleet and footless beast of burden 
charioted our fortunes that we turned our back upon it with a 
sense of separation. We had a long detour out of the world, but 
now we were back in the familiar places, where life itself makes 5 
all the running, and we are carried to meet adventure without a 
stroke of the paddle. Now we were to return, like the voyager 
in the play, and see what rearrangements fortune had perfected 
the while in our surroundings ; what surprises stood ready-made 
for us at home ; and whither and how far the world had voy- lo 
aged in our absence. You may paddle all day long ; but it is 
when you come back at nightfall, and look in at the familiar 
room, that you find Love or Death awaiting you beside the 
stove ; and the most beautiful adventures are not those we go 
to seek. 15 



EPILOGUE TO ''AN INLAND VOYAGE " i 

The country where they journeyed, that green, breezy valley 
of the Loing, is one very attractive to cheerful and solitary 
people. The weather was superb ; all night it thundered and 
lightened, and the rain fell in sheets ; by day, the heavens were 
5 cloudless, the sun fervent, the air vigorous and pure. They 
walked separate : the Cigarette plodding behind with some phi- 
losophy, the lean Arethusa posting on ahead. Thus each en- 
joyed his own reflections by the way ; each had perhaps time 
to tire of them before he met his comrade at the designated 

lo inn ; and the pleasures of society and solitude combined to fill 
the day. The Arethusa carried in his knapsack the works of 
Charles of Orleans, and employed some of the hours of travel 
in the concoction of English roundels. In this path, he must 
thus have preceded Mr. Lang, Mr. Dobson, Mr. Henley, and 

1 5 all contemporary roundeleers ; but for good reasons, he will be 
the last to publish the result. The Cigarette walked burthened 
with a volume of Michelet. And both these books, it will be 
seen, played a part in the subsequent adventure. 

The Arethusa was unwisely dressed. He is no precisian in 

20 attire ; but by all accounts, he was never so ill-inspired as on that 
tramp ; having set forth indeed, upon a moment's notice, from 
the most unfashionable spot in Europe, Barbizon. On his head, 
he wore a smoking cap of Indian work, the gold lace pitifully 
frayed and tarnished. A flannel shirt of an agreeable dark hue, 

25 which the satirical called black ; a light tweed coat made by a 
good English tailor ; ready-made cheap linen trousers and leath- 
ern gaiters completed his array. In person, he is exceptionally 

1 Originally published in "Across the Plains." 



EPILOGUE 119 

lean ; and his face is not like those of happier mortals, a cer- 
tificate. For years he could not pass a frontier or visit a bank 
without suspicion ; the police everywhere, but in his native city, 
looked askance upon him ; and (though I am sure it will not 
be credited) he is actually denied admittance to the casino of 5 
Monte Carlo. If you will imagine him, dressed as above, stoop- 
ing under his knapsack, walking nearly five miles an hour with 
the folds of the ready-made trousers fluttering about his spindle 
shanks, and still looking eagerly round him as if in terror of 
pursuit — the figure, when realized, is far from reassuring. 10 
When Villon journeyed (perhaps by the same pleasant valley) 
to his exile at Roussillon, I wonder if he had not something of 
the same appearance. Something of the same preoccupation 
he had beyond a doubt, for he too must have tinkered verses 
as he walked, with more success than his successor. And if he 15 
had anything like the same inspiring weather, the same nights 
of uproar, men in armor rolling and resounding down the stairs 
of heaven, the rain hissing on the village streets, the wild bull's- 
eye of the storm flashing all night long into the bare inn 
chamber — the same sweet return of day, the same unfathomable 20 
blue of noon, the same high-colored, halcyon eves — and above 
all if he had anything like as good a comrade, anything like as 
keen a relish for what he saw, and what he ate, and the rivers 
that he bathed in, and the rubbish that he wrote, I would ex- 
change estates to-day with the poor exile, and count myself a 25 
gainer. 

But there was another point of similarity between the two 
journeys, for which the Arethusa was to pay dear: both were 
gone upon in days of incomplete security. It was not long after 
the Franco-Prussian war. Swiftly as men forget, that country- 30 
side was still alive with tales of uhlans, and outlying sentries, 
and hairbreadth 'scapes from the ignominious cord, and pleasant 
momentary friendships between invader and invaded. A year, 
at the most two years later, you might have tramped all that 



I20 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

country over and not heard one anecdote. And a year or two 
later, you would — if you were a rather ill-looking young man 
in nondescript array — have gone your rounds in greater safety ; 
for along with more interesting matter, the Prussian spy would 
5 have somewhat faded from men's imaginations, . . . 

On certain little difficulties encountered by the Arethusa at 
Chatillon-sur-Loing, I have not space to dwell ; another Cha- 
tillon, of grislier memory, looms too near at hand. But the next 
day, in a certain hamlet called La Jussiere, he stopped to drink 

lo a glass of sirup in a very poor, bare drinking-shop. The hostess, 
a comely woman, suckling a child, examined the traveler with 
kindly and pitying eyes. '' You are not of this department ? " 
she asked. The Arefhnsa told her he was English. "Ah ! " she 
said, surprised. " We have no English. We have many Italians, 

1 5 however, and they do very well ; they do not complain of the 
people of hereabouts. An Englishman may do very well also ; 
it will be something new." Here was a dark saying, over which 
the A7'ethusa pondered as he drank his grenadine ; but when 
he rose and asked what was to pay, the light came upon him 

20 in a flash. " O^ pour vous,''^ replied the landlady, '' a half- 
penny ! " Pour vous ? By heaven, she took him for a beggar ! 
He paid his halfpenny, feeling that it were ungracious to correct 
her. But when he was forth again upon the road, he became 
vexed in spirit. The conscience is no gentleman, he is a rabbin- 

25 ical fellow ; and his conscience told him he had stolen the sirup. 

That night the travelers slept in Gien ; the next day they 

passed the river and set forth (severally, as their custom was) 

on a short stage through the green plain upon the Berry side, 

to Chatillon-sur-Loire. It was the first day of the shooting ; 

30 and the air rang with the report of firearms and the admiring 
cries of sportsmen. Overhead the birds were in consternation, 
wheeling in clouds, settling and re-arising. And yet with all this 
bustle on either hand, the road itself lay solitary. The Arethusa 
smoked a pipe beside a milestone, and I remember he laid 



EPILOGUE 121 

down very exactly all he was to do at Chatillon : how he was 
to enjoy a cold plunge, to change his shirt, and to await the 
Cigarette's arrival, in sublime inaction, by the margin of the 
Loire. Fired by these ideas, he pushed the more rapidly for- 
ward, and came, early in the afternoon and in a breathing heat, 5 
to the entering-in of that ill-fated town. Childe Roland to the 
dark tower came. 

A polite gendarme threw his shadow on the path. 

^''Mo7isieur est voyageur? " he asked. 

And the Arethusa^ strong in his innocence, forgetful of his 10 
vile attire, replied — I had almost said with gayety : '' So it 
would appear." 

" His papers are in order.? " said the gendarme. And when 
the Arethusa with a slight change of voice, admitted he had 
none, he was informed (politely enough) that he must appear 15 
before the Commissary. 

The Commissary sat at a table in his bedroom, stripped to 
the shirt and trousers, but still copiously perspiring ; and when 
he turned upon the prisoner a large meaningless countenance, 
that was (like Bardolph's) '' all whelks and bubuckles," the dull- 20 
est might have been prepared for grief. Here was a stupid 
man, sleepy with the heat and fretful at the interruption, whom 
neither appeal nor argument could reach. 

The Commissary. You have no papers ? 

The Arethusa. Not here. 25 

The Commissary. Why ? 

The Arethusa. I have left them behind in my valise. 

The Commissary. You know, however, that it is forbidden 
to circulate without papers ? 

The Arethusa. Pardon me : I am convinced of the con- 30 
trary. I am here on my rights as an English subject by inter- 
national treaty. 

The Commissary i^vith sco?'n). You call yourself an Eng- 
lishman ? 



122 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

The Arethusa. I do. 

The Commissary. Humph. — What is your trade ? 

The Arethusa. I am a Scotch Advocate. 

The Commissary {with singular a7inoyance). A Scotch ad- 
5 vocate! Do you then pretend to support yourself by that in 
this department 1 

The Arethusa modestly disclaimed the pretension. The Com- 
missary had scored a point. 

The Commissary. Why, then, do you travel 1 
10 The Arethusa. I travel for pleasure. 

The Commissary (^pointing to the knapsack^ and with sub- 
li?jie incredulity). Avec (a ? Voyez-vous, je suis lui hojtime intelli- 
gent I (With that } Look here, I am a person of intelligence !) 

The culprit remaining silent under this home thrust, the 
1 5 Commissary relished his triumph for a while, and then demanded 
(like the postman, but with what different expectations !) to see 
the contents of the knapsack. And here the Arethusa^ not yet 
sufficiently awake to his position, fell into a grave mistake. 
There was little or no furniture in the room except the Com- 
2o missary's chair and table ; and to facilitate matters, the Arethusa 
(with all the innocence on earth) leant the knapsack on a 
corner of the bed. The Commissary fairly bounded from his 
seat ; his face and neck flushed past purple, almost into blue ; 
and he screamed to lay the desecrating object on the floor. 
25 The knapsack proved to contain a change of shirts, of shoes, 
of socks, and of linen trousers, a small dressing case, a piece of 
soap in one of the shoes, two volumes of the Collection Jannet 
lettered ''Poesies de Charles d'Orleans," a map, and a version 
book containing divers notes in prose and the remarkable Eng- 
30 lish roundels of the voyager, still to this day unpublished : the 
Commissary of Chatillon is the only living man who has clapped 
an eye on these artistic trifles. He turned the assortment over 
with a contumelious finger; it was plain from his daintiness that 
he regarded the Arethusa and all his belongings as the very 



EPILOGUE 123 

temple of infection. Still there was nothing suspicious about 
the map, nothing really criminal except the roundels ; as for 
Charles of Orleans, to the ignorant mind of the prisoner, he 
seemed as good as a certificate ; and it was supposed the farce 
was nearly over. 5 

The inquisitor resumed his seat. 

The Commissary {after a pause). Eh bien, je vais vous dire 
ce que vous etes. Vous etes aUe??iand et vous ve?iez chanter a la 
foire. (Well, then, I will tell you what you are. You are a 
German and have come to sing at the fair.) 10 

The Arethusa. Would you like to hear me sing ? I believe 
I could convince you of the contrary. 

The Commissary. Pas de plaisantei'ie^ vionsieur ! 

The Arethusa. Well, sir, oblige me at least by looking at 
this book. Here, I open it with my eyes shut. Read one of 15 
these songs — read this one — and tell me, you who are a man 
of intelligence, if it would be possible to sing it at a fair ? 

The Commissary {critically). Mais oui. Tres bien. 

The Arethusa. Comment, monsieur I What! But you do 
not observe it is antique. It is difficult to understand, even for 20 
you and me ; but for the audience at a fair, it would be mean- 
ingless. 

The Commissary {faking a pen). Enjin^ il faut en Jinir. 
What is your name ? 

The Arethusa {speaking with the sivallowing vivacity of the 25 
English). Robert-Louis-Stev'ns'n. 

The Commissary {aghast). He I Quoi 1 

The Arethusa {perceiving and improving his advantage). 
Rob'rt-Lou's-Stev'ns'n. 

The Commissary {after several conflicts 7oith his pen). Eh 30 
bien. il faut se passer du nom. Ca ne s^ecrit pas. (Well, we must 
do without the name : it is unspellable.) 

The above is a rough summary of this momentous conversa- 
tion, in which I have been chiefly careful to preserve the plums 



124 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

of the Commissary ; but the remainder of the scene, perhaps 
because of his rising anger, has left but little definite in the 
memory of the Aret/msa. The Commissary was not, I think, a 
practiced literary man ; no sooner, at least, had he taken pen in 
5 hand and embarked on the composition of ^^ pro ce s-verbal^ than 
he became distinctly more uncivil and began to show a predilec- 
tion for that simplest of all forms of repartee : " You lie ! " 
Several times the Arethusa let it pass, and then suddenly flared 
up, refused to accept more insults or to answer further ques- 

lo tions, defied the Commissary to do his worst, and promised him, 
if he did, that he should bitterly repent it. Perhaps if he had 
worn this proud front from the first, instead of beginning with 
a sense of entertainment and then going on to argue, the thing 
might have turned otherwise ; for even at this eleventh hour 

15 the Commissary was visibly staggered. But it was too late; he 
had been challenged ; the proces-verbal was begun ; and he 
again squared his elbows over his writing, and the Arethusa 
was led forth a prisoner. 

A step or two down the hot road stood the gendarmerie. 

20 Thither was our unfortunate conducted, and there he was bidden 
to empty forth the contents of his pockets. A handkerchief, a 
pen, a pencil, a pipe and tobacco, matches, and some ten francs 
of change : that was all. Not a file, not a cipher, not a scrap of 
writing whether to identify or to condemn. The very gendarme 

25 was appalled before such destitution. 

'* I regret," he said, '' that I arrested you, for I see that you 
are no voyoii.''^ And he promised him every indulgence. 

I^x^ Arethusa, thus encouraged, asked for his pipe. That he 
was told was impossible, but if he chewed, he might have some 

30 tobacco. He did not chew, however, and asked instead to have 
his handkerchief. 

"iV^7Z," said the gendarme. ''^Nous avons eu des histoires de 
gens qui se soiit peiidusJ' (No, we have had histories of people 
who hanged themselves.) 



EPILOGUE 125 

" What," cried the Arethnsa. '^ And is it for that you refuse 
me my handkerchief ? But see how much more easily I could 
hang myself in my trousers ! " 

The man was struck by the novelty of the idea ; but he stuck 
to his colors, and only continued to repeat vague offers of 5 
service. 

" At least," said the Arethusa, " be sure that you arrest my 
comrade ; he will follow me erelong on the same road, and you 
can tell him by the sack upon his shoulders." 

This promised, the prisoner was led round into the back 10 
court of the building, a cellar door was opened, he was motioned 
down the stair, and bolts grated and chains clanged behind his 
descending person. 

The philosophic and still more the imaginative mind is apt to 
suppose itself prepared for any mortal accident. Prison, among 15 
other ills, was one that had been often faced by the undaunted 
Arethusa. Even as he went down the stairs, he was telling him- 
self that here was a famous occasion for a roundel, and that like 
the committed linnets of the tuneful cavalier, he too would make 
his prison musical. I will tell the truth at once : the roundel 20 
was never written, or it should be printed in this place, to raise 
a smile. Two reasons interfered : the first moral, the second 
physical. 

It is one of the curiosities of human nature, that although all 
men are liars, they can none of them bear to be told so of 25 
themselves. To get and take the lie with equanimity is a 
stretch beyond the stoic ; and the A?'efhusa, who had been sur- 
feited upon that insult, was blazing inwardly with a white heat 
of smothered wrath. But the physical had also its part. The 
cellar in which he was confined was some feet underground, and 30 
it was only lighted by an unglazed, narrow aperture high up in 
the wall and smothered in the leaves of a green vine. The walls 
were of naked masonry, the floor of bare earth ; by way of 
furniture there was an earthenware basin, a water jug, and a 



. 126 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

wooden bedstead with a blue-gray cloak for bedding. To be 
taken from the hot air of a summer's afternoon, the reverbera- 
tion of the road and the stir of rapid exercise, and plunged into 
the gloom and damp of this receptacle for vagabonds, struck an 
5 instant chill upon the Arethusd's blood. Now see in how small 
a matter a hardship may consist : the floor was exceedingly un- 
even underfoot, with the very spade marks, I suppose, of the 
laborers who dug the foundations of the barrack ; and what 
with the poor twilight and the irregular surface, walking was 

10 impossible. The caged author resisted for a good while ; but 
the chill of the place struck deeper and deeper ; and at length, 
with such reluctance as you may fancy, he was driven to climb 
upon the bed and wrap himself in the public covering. There, 
then, he lay upon the verge of shivering, plunged in semidark- 

15 ness, wound in a garment whose touch he dreaded like the 
plague, and (in a spirit far removed from resignation) telling the 
roll of the insults he had just received. These are not circum- 
stances favorable to the muse. 

Meantime (to look at the upper surface where the sun 

20 was still shining and the guns of sportsmen were still noisy 
through the tufted plain) the Cigarette was drawing near at 
his more philosophic pace. In those days of liberty and health 
he was the constant partner of the Arethusa, and had ample 
opportunity to share in that gentleman's disfavor with the 

25 police. Many a bitter bowl had he partaken of with that disas- 
trous comrade. He was himself a man born to float easily 
through life, his face and manner artfully recommending him to 
all. There was but one suspicious circumstance he could not carry 
off, and that was his companion. He will not readily forget the 

30 Commissary in what is ironically called the free town of Frank- 
fort-on-the-Main ; nor the Franco-Belgian frontier ; nor the inn 
at La Fere ; last, but not least, he is pretty certain to remember 
Chatillon-sur-Loire. 

At the town entry, the gendarme culled him like a wayside 



EPILOGUE . 127 

flower ; and a moment later, two persons, in a high state of 
surprise, were confronted in the Commissary's office. For if the 
Cigarette was surprised to be arrested, the Commissary was no 
less taken aback by the appearance and appointments of his 
captive. Here was a man about whom there could be no mis- 5 
take : a man of an unquestionable and unassailable manner, in 
apple-pie order, dressed not with neatness merely but elegance, 
ready with his passport, at a word, and well supplied with 
money : a man the Commissary w^ould have doffed his hat to on 
chance upon the highway ; and this beau cavalier unblushingly 10 
claimed the Arethusa for his comrade ! The conclusion of the 
intei"view was foregone ; of its humors, I remember only one. 
"Baronet?" demanded the magistrate, glancing up from the 
passport. '' Alors, monsieur, vous etes le fits d^u?i baron 2 " And 
when the Cigarette (his one mistake throughout the interview) 15 
denied the soft impeachment, ''''Alors,''^ from the Commissary, 
" ce 71' est pas votre passeport !^' But these were ineffectual thun- 
ders ; he never dreamed of laying hands upon the Cigarette ; 
presently he fell into a mood of unrestrained admiration, gloating 
over the contents of the knapsack, commending our friend's 20 
tailor. Ah, what an honored guest was the Commissary enter- 
taining ! what suitable clothes he wore for the warm weather ! 
what beautiful maps, what an attractive work of history he car- 
ried in his knapsack ! You are to understand there was now 
but one point of difference between them : what was to be done 25 
with the Arethusa ? the Cigarette demanding his release, the 
Commissary still claiming him as the dungeon's own. Now it • 
chanced that the Cigarette had passed some years of his life in 
Egypt, where he had made acquaintance with two very bad 
things, cholera morbus and pashas ; and in the eye of the Com- 30 
missary, as he fingered the volume of Michelet, it seemed to our 
traveler there was something Turkish. I pass over this lightly ; 
it is highly possible there was some misunderstanding, highly 
possible that the Commissary (charmed with his visitor) supposed 



128 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

the attraction to be mutual and took for an act of growing 
friendship what the Cigarette himself regarded as a bribe. And 
at any rate, was there ever a bribe more singular than an odd 
volume of Michelet's history ? The work was promised him 
5 for the morrow, before our departure ; and presently after, 
either because he had his price, or to show that he was not the 
man to be behind in friendly offices — '^' Eh Men,'' he said, "_/> 
suppose quHl faut Idcher votre caf7iarade'' And he tore up that 
feast of humor, the unfinished proces-verbal. Ah, if he had only 

lo torn up instead the Arethusa's roundels ! There were many 
works burned at Alexandria, there are many treasured in 
the British Museum, that I could better spare than the pro- 
ces-verbal of Chatillon. Poor bubuckled Commissary ! I begin 
to be sorry that he never had his Michelet : perceiving in him 

15 fine human traits, a broad-based stupidity, a gusto in his magis- 
terial functions, a taste for letters, a ready admiration for the 
admirable. And if he did not admire the A?rtkiisa, he was not 
alone in that. 

To the imprisoned one, shivering under the public covering, 

20 there came suddenly a noise of bolts and chains. He sprang to 
his feet, ready to welcome a companion in calamity ; and instead 
of that, the door was flung wide, the friendly gendarme appeared 
above in the strong daylight, and with a magnificent gesture 
(being probably a student of the drama) — '^ Voiis etes libre!'' 

25 he said. None too soon for the Arethusa. I doubt if he had 

been half an hour imprisoned ; but by the watch in a man's 

. brain (which was the only watch he carried) he should have 

been eight times longer ; and he passed forth with ecstasy up 

the cellar stairs into the healing warmth of the afternoon sun ; 

30 and the breath of the earth came as sweet as a cow's into his 
nostril ; and he heard again (and could have laughed for pleas- 
ure) the concord of delicate noises that we call the hum of life. 
And here it might be thought that my history ended ; but 
not so, this was an act drop and not the curtain. Upon what 



EPILOGUE 129 

followed in front of the barrack, since there was a lady in the 
case, I scruple to expatiate. The wife of the Mare'chal-des-logis 
was a handsome woman, and yet the Arethusa was not sorry to be 
gone from her society. Something of her image, cool as a peach 
on that hot afternoon, still lingers in his memory : yet more of 5 
her conversation. " You have there a very fine parlor," said the 
poor gentleman. — ''Ah," said Madame la Marechale {(ies-logis)^ 
'' you are very well acquainted with such parlors ! " And you 
should have seen with what a hard and scornful eye she meas- 
ured the vagabond before her ! I do not think he ever hated 10 
the Commissary ; but before that interview was at an end, he 
hated Madame la Marechale. His passion (as I am led to under- 
stand by one who was present) stood confessed in a burning 
eye, a pale cheek, and a trembling utterance ; Madame mean- 
while tasting the joys of the matador, goading him with barbed 15 
words and staring him coldly down. 

It was certainly good to be away from this lady, and better 
still to sit down to an excellent dinner in the inn. Here, too, the 
despised travelers scraped acquaintance with their next neigh- 
bor, a gentleman of these parts, returned from the day's sport, 2(x_^ 
who had the good taste to find pleasure in their society. The 
dinner at an end, the gentleman proposed the acquaintance 
should be ripened in the cafe. 

The cafe was crowded with sportsmen conclamantly explain- 
ing to each other and the world the smallness of their bags. 25 
About the center of the room, the Cigai-ette and the Arethusa 
sat with their new acquaintance ; a trio very well pleased, for 
the travelers (after their late experience) were greedy of con- 
sideration, and their sportsman rejoiced in a pair of patient lis- 
teners. Suddenly the glass door flew open with a crash ; the 30 
Marechal-des-logis appeared in the interval, gorgeously belted 
and befrogged, entered without salutation, strode up the room 
with a clang of spurs and weapons, and disappeared through a 
door at the far end. Close at his heels followed the Arethusa's 



I30 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

gendarme of the afternoon, imitating, with a nice shade of dif- 
ference, the imperial bearing of his chief ; only, as he passed, 
he struck lightly with his open hand on the shoulder of his late 
captive, and with that ringing, dramatic utterance of which he 
5 had the secret — ^^Suivez /" said he. 

The arrest of the members, the oath of the Tennis Court, the 
signing of the Declaration of Independence, Mark Antony's ora- 
tion, all the brave scenes of history, I conceive as having been 
not unlike that evening in the cafe at Chatillon. Terror breathed 

lo upon the assembly. A moment later, when the Aret/msa had 
followed his recaptors into the farther part of the house, the 
Cigaf'ette found himself alone with his coffee in a ring of empty 
chairs and tables, all the lusty sportsmen huddled into corners, 
all their clamorous voices hushed in whispering, all their eyes 

15 shooting at him furtively as at a leper. 

And the Arethusa? Well, he had a long, sometimes a trying, 
interview in the back kitchen. The Mar^chal-des-logis, who was 
a very handsome man, and I believe both intelligent and honest, 
had no clear opinion on the case. He thought the Commissary 

20. had done wrong, but he did not wish to get his subordinates into 
trouble ; and he proposed this, that, and the other, to all of 
which the Arethusa (with a growing sense of his position) 
demurred. 

" In short," suggested the Arethusa^ " you want to wash 

25 your hands of further responsibility? Well, then, let me go to 
Paris." 

The Marechal-des-logis looked at his watch. 
" You may leave," said he, '' by the ten o'clock train for 
Paris." 

30 And at noon the next day the travelers were telling their 
misadventure in the dining room at Siron's. 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



My dear Sidney Colvin, 

The journey which this Httle book is to describe was very agreeable 
and fortunate for me. After an uncouth beginning, I had the best of 
luck to the end. But we are all travelers in what John Bunyan calls 
the wilderness of this world, — all, too, travelers with a donkey ; and 
the best that we find in our travels is an honest friend. He is a 
fortunate voyager who finds many. We travel, indeed, to find them. 
They are the end and the reward of life. They keep us worthy of 
ourselves ; and, when we are alone, we are only nearer to the absent. 

Every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends 
of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning ; they find private 
messages, assurances of love, and expressions of gratitude dropped 
for them in every corner. The public is but a generous patron who 
defrays the postage. Yet, though the letter is directed to all, we 
have an old and kindly custom of addressing it on the outside to one. 
Of what shall a man be proud, if he is not proud of his friends? 
And so, my dear Sidney Colvin, it is with pride that I sign myself 
affectionately yours, 

R. L. S. 



^33 



VELAY 
THE DONKEY, THE PACK, AND THE PACKSADDLE 

In a little place called Le Monastier, in a pleasant highland 
valley fifteen miles from Le Puy, I spent about a month of fine 
days. Monastier is notable for the making of lace, for drunken- 
ness, for freedom of language, and for unparalleled political 
dissension. There are adherents of each of the four French 5 
parties — Legitimists, Orleanists, Imperialists, and Republicans 
— in this litde mountain town ; and they all hate, loathe, decry, 
and calumniate each other. Except for business purposes, or to 
give each other the lie in a tavern brawl, they have laid aside 
even the civility of speech. 'Tis a mere mountain Poland. In 10 
the midst of this Babylon I found myself a rallying point ; every 
one was anxious to be kind and helpful to the stranger. This 
was not merely from the natural hospitality of mountain people, 
nor even from the surprise with which I was regarded as a man 
living of his own free will in Monastier, when he might just as 15 
well have lived anywhere else in this big world ; it arose a 
good deal from my projected excursion southward through the 
Cevennes. A traveler of my sort was a thing hitherto unheard- 
of in that district. I was looked upon with contempt, like a man 
who should project a journey to the moon, but yet with a re- 20 
spectful interest, like one setting forth for the inclement Pole. 
All were ready to help in my preparations ; a crowd of sympa- 
thizers supported me at the critical moment of a bargain ; not 
a step w^as taken but was heralded by glasses round and cele- 
brated by a dinner or a breakfast. 25 

It was already hard upon October before I was ready to set 
forth, and at the high altitudes over which my road lay there 

135 



136 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

was no Indian summer to be looked for. I was determined, if 
not to camp out, at least to have the means of camping out in 
my possession ; for there is nothing more harassing to an easy 
mind than the necessity of reaching shelter by dusk, and the 
5 hospitality of a village inn is not always to be reckoned sure by 
those who trudge on foot. A tent, above all for a solitary 
traveler, is troublesome to pitch, and troublesome to strike 
again ; and even on the march it forms a conspicuous feature 
in your baggage. A sleeping sack, on the other hand, is always 

10 ready — you have only to get into it ; it serves a double purpose 
— a bed by night, a portmanteau by day ; and it does not ad- 
vertise your intention of camping out to every curious passer-by. 
This is a huge point. If the camp is not secret, it is but a 
troubled resting place ; you become a public character ; the con- 

1 5 vivial rustic visits your bedside after an early supper ; and you 
must sleep with one eye open, and be up before the day. I de- 
cided on a sleeping sack ; and after repeated visits to Le Puy, 
and a deal of high living for myself and my advisers, a sleeping 
sack was designed, constructed, and triumphally brought home. 

20 This child of my invention was nearly six feet square, ex- 
clusive of two triangular flaps to serve as a pillow by night and 
as the top and bottom of the sack by day. I call it " the sack," 
but it was never a sack by more than courtesy : only a sort of 
long roll or sausage, green waterproof cart cloth without and 

25 blue sheep's fur within. It was commodious as a valise, warm 
and dry for a bed. There was luxurious turning room for one ; 
and at a pinch the thing might serve for two. I could bury my- 
self in it up to the neck ; for my head I trusted to a fur cap, 
with a hood to fold down over my ears and a band to pass under 

30 my nose like a respirator ; and in case of heavy rain I proposed 
to make myself a little tent, or tentlet, with my waterproof coat, 
three stones, and a bent branch. 

It will readily be conceived that I could not carry this huge 
package on my own, merely human, shoulders. It remained to 



VELAY 137 

choose a beast of burthen. Now, a horse is a fine lady among 
animals, flighty, timid, delicate in eating, of tender health ; he is 
too valuable and too restive to be left alone, so that you are 
chained to your brute as to a fellow galley slave ; a dangerous 
road puts him out of his wits ; in short, he 's an uncertain and 5 
exacting ally, and adds thirtyfold to the troubles of the voyager. 
What I required was something cheap and small and hardy, 
and of a stolid and peaceful temper; and all these requisites 
pointed to a donkey. 

There dwelt an old man in Monastier, of rather unsound 10 
intellect according to some, much followed by street boys, and 
known to fame as Father Adam. Father Adam had a cart, and 
to draw the cart a diminutive she-ass, not much bigger than a 
dog, the color of a mouse, with a kindly eye and a determined 
under jaw. There was something neat and high-bred, a quaker- 1 5 
ish elegance, about the rogue that hit my fancy on the spot. 
Our first interview was in Monastier market place. To prove her 
good temper, one child after another was set upon her back to 
ride, and one after another went head over heels into the air; 
until a want of confidence began to reign in youthful bosoms, 20 
and the experiment was discontinued from a dearth of subjects. 
I was already backed by a deputation of my friends ; but as if 
this were not enough, all the buyers and sellers came round and 
helped me in the bargain ; and the ass and I and Father Adam 
were the center of a hubbub for near half an hour. At 25 
length she passed into my service for the consideration of sixty- 
five francs and a glass of brandy. The sack had already cost 
eighty francs and two glasses of beer; so that Modestine, 
as I instantly baptized her, was upon all accounts the cheaper 
article. Indeed, that was as it should be; for she was only 30 
an appurtenance of my mattress, or self-acting bedstead on 
four casters. 

I had a last interview with Father Adam in a billiard room at 
the witching hour of dawn, when I administered the brandy. 



138 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

He professed himself greatly touched by the separation, and 
declared he had often bought white bread for the donkey when 
he had been content with black bread for himself ; but this, ac- 
cording to the best authorities, must have been a flight of fancy. 
5 He had a name in the village for brutally misusing the ass ; yet 
it is certain that he shed a tear, and the tear made a clean mark 
down one cheek. 

By the advice of a fallacious local saddler, a leather pad was 
made for me with rings to fasten on my bundle ; and I thought- 

10 fully completed my kit and arranged my toilet. By way of 
armory and utensils, I took a revolver, a little spirit lamp and 
pan, a lantern and some halfpenny candles, a jackknife and a 
large leather flask. The main cargo consisted of two entire 
changes of warm clothing — besides my traveling wear of coun- 

1 5 try velveteen, pilot coat, and knitted spencer — some books, and 
my railway rug, which, being also in the form of a bag, made 
me a double castle for cold nights. The permanent larder was 
represented by cakes of chocolate and tins of Bologna sausage. 
All this, except what I carried about my person, was easily 

2o stowed into the sheepskin bag ; and by good fortune I threw in 
my empty knapsack, rather for convenience of carriage than 
from any thought that I should want it on my journey. For 
more immediate needs, I took a leg of cold mutton, a bottle of 
Beaujolais, an empty bottle to carry milk, an egg beater, and a 

25 considerable quantity of black bread and white, like Father 
Adam, for myself and donkey, only in my scheme of things the 
destinations were reversed. 

Monastrians, of all shades of thought in politics, had agreed 
in threatening me with many ludicrous misadventures, and with 

30 sudden death in many surprising forms. Cold, wolves, robbers, 
above all the nocturnal practical joker, were daily and eloquently 
forced on my attention. Yet in these vaticinations, the true, 
patent danger was left out. Like Christian, it was from my 
pack I suffered by the way. Before telling my own mishaps, let 



VELAY 1 39 

me, in two words, relate the lesson of my experience. If the 
pack is well strapped at the ends, and hung at full length — not 
doubled, for your life — across the packsaddle, the traveler is 
safe. The saddle will certainly not fit, such is the imperfection- 
of our transitory life ; it will assuredly topple and tend to over- 5 
set; but there are stones on every roadside, and a man soon 
learns the art of correcting any tendency to overbalance with a 
well-adjusted stone. 

On the day of my departure 1 was up a little after five ; by 
six, we began to load the donkey ; and ten minutes after, my lo 
hopes were in the dust. The pad would not stay on Modestine's 
back for half a moment. I returned it to its maker, with whom 
I had so contumelious a passage that the street outside was 
crowded from wall to wall with gossips looking on and listening. 
The pad changed hands with much vivacity ; perhaps it would 1 5 
be more descriptive to say that we threw it at each other's heads ; 
and, at any rate, we were very warm and unfriendly, and spoke 
with a deal of freedom. 

I had a common donkey packsaddle — a harde, as they call 
it — fitted upon Modestine ; and once more loaded her with 20 
my effects. The double sack, my pilot coat (for it was warm, 
and I was to walk in my waistcoat), a great bar of black bread, 
and an open basket containing the white bread, the mutton, and 
the bottles, were all corded together in a very elaborate system 
of knots, and I looked on the result with fatuous content. In- 25 
such a monstrous deck cargo, all poised above the donkey's 
shoulders, with nothing below to balance, on a brand-new pack- 
saddle that had not yet been worn to fit the animal, and fastened 
with brand-new girths that might be expected to stretch and 
slacken by the way, even a very careless traveler should have 30 
seen disaster brewing. That elaborate system of knots, again, 
was the work of too many sympathizers to be very artfully 
designed. It is true they tightened the cords with a will; as 
many as three at a time would have a foot against Modestine's 



I40 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

quarters, and be hauling with clenched teeth ; but I learned 
afterwards that one thoughtful person, without any exercise 
of force, can make a more solid job than half a dozen heated 
and enthusiastic grooms. I was then but a novice ; even after 
5 the misadventure of the pad nothing could disturb my secu- 
rity, and I went forth from the stable door as an ox goeth to 
the slaughter. 



THE GREEN DONKEY DRIVER 

The bell of Monastier was just striking nine as I got quit of 
these preliminary troubles and descended the hill through the 
common. As long as I was within sight of the windows, a 
secret shame and the fear of some laughable defeat withheld me 
from tampering with Modestine. She tripped along upon her 5 
four small hoofs with a sober daintiness of gait ; from time to 
time she shook her ears or her tail ; and she looked so small 
under the bundle that my mind misgave me. We got across the 
ford without difficulty — there was no doubt about the matter, 
she was docility itself — and once on the other bank, where the lo 
road begins to mount through pine woods, I took in my right 
hand the unhallowed staff, and with a quaking spirit applied it 
to the donkey. Modestine brisked up her pace for perhaps 
three steps, and then relapsed into her former minuet. Another 
application had the same effect, and so with the third. I am 15 
worthy the name of an Englishman, and it goes against my 
conscience to lay my hand rudely on a female. I desisted, and 
looked her all over from head to foot ; the poor brute's knees 
were trembling and her breathing was distressed ; it was plain 
that she could go no faster on a hill. God forbid, thought I, 20 
that I should brutalize this innocent creature ; let her go at her 
own pace, and let me patiently follow. 

What that pace was, there is no word mean enough to de- 
scribe ; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk 
is slower than a run ; it kept me hanging on each foot for an in- 25 
credible length of time ; in five minutes it exhausted the spirit 
and set up a fever in all the muscles of the leg. And yet I had 
to keep close at hand and measure my advance exactly upon 
hers ; for if I dropped a few yards into the rear, or went on a 
few yards ahead, Modestine came instantly to a halt and began 30 

141 



142 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

to browse. The thought that this was to last from here to 
Alais nearly broke my heart. Of all conceivable journeys, 
this promised to be the most tedious. I tried to tell myself 
it was a lovely day ; I tried to charm my foreboding spirit 
5 with tobacco ; but I had a vision ever present to me of the 
long, long roads, up hill and down dale, and a pair of figures 
ever infinitesimally moving, foot by foot, a yard to the minute, 
and, like things enchanted in a nightmare, approaching no 
nearer to the goal. 

lo In the meantime there came up behind us a tall peasant, per- 
haps forty years of age, of an ironical snuffy countenance, and 
arrayed in the green tail coat of the country. He overtook us 
hand over hand, and stopped to consider our pitiful advance. 
" Your donkey," says he, '^ is very old ? " 

15 I told him, I believed not. 

Then, he supposed, we had come far. 
I told him, we had but newly left Monastier. 
''^Et vous ma7'chez comme /;a !^^ cried he ; and, throwing back 
his head, he laughed long and heartily. I watched him, half 

20 prepared to feel offended, until he had satisfied his mirth ; 
and then, '' You must have no pity on these animals," said 
he ; and, plucking a switch out of a thicket, he began to lace 
Modestine about the stern works, uttering a cry. The rogue 
pricked up her ears and broke into a good round pace, which 

25 she kept up without flagging, and without exhibiting the least 
symptom of distress, as long as the peasant kept beside us. 
Her former panting and shaking had been, I regret to say, 
a piece of comedy. 

My dens ex machina, before he left me, supplied some excel- 

30 lent, if inhumane, advice ; presented me with the switch, which 
he declared she would feel more tenderly than my cane ; and 
finally taught me the true cry or masonic word of donkey drivers, 
" Proot ! " All the time, he regarded me with a comical incredu- 
lous air, which was embarrassing to confront ; and smiled over 



VELAY 143 

my donkey driving, as I might have smiled over his orthography, 
or his green tail coat. But it was not my turn for the moment. 

I was proud of my new lore, and thought I had learned the 
art to perfection. And certainly Modestine did wonders for the 
rest of the forenoon, and I had a breathing space to look about 5 
me. It was Sabbath ; the mountain fields were all vacant in the 
sunshine ; and as we came down through St. Martin de Frugeres, 
the church was crowded to the door, there were people kneeling 
without upon the steps, and the sound of the priest's chanting 
came forth out of the dim interior. It gave me a home feeling on 10 
the spot ; for I am a countryman of the Sabbath, so to speak, 
and all Sabbath observances, like a Scotch accent, strike in me 
mixed feelings, grateful and the reverse. It is only a traveler, 
hurrying by like a person from another planet, who can rightly 
enjoy the peace and beauty of the great ascetic feast. The 15 
sight of the resting country does his spirit good. There is some- 
thing better than music in the wide unusual silence ; and it dis- 
poses him to amiable thoughts, like the sound of a little river 
or the warmth of sunlight. 

In this pleasant humor I came down the hill to where 20 
Goudet stands in the green end of a valley, with Chateau Beau- 
fort opposite upon a rocky steep, and the stream, as clear as 
crystal, lying in a deep pool between them. Above and below, 
you may hear it wimpling over the stones, an amiable stripling 
of a river, which it seems absurd to call the Loire. On all sides, 25 
Goudet is shut in by mountains ; rocky footpaths, practicable 
at best for donkeys, join it to the outer world of France ; and 
the men and women drink and swear, in their green corner, or 
look up at the snow-clad peaks in winter from the threshold of 
their homes, in an isolation, you would think, like that of 30 
Homer's Cyclops. But it is not so ; the postman reaches 
Goudet with the letter bag ; the aspiring youth of Goudet are 
within a day's walk of the railway at Le Puy ; and here in the 
inn you may find an engraved portrait of the host's nephew, 



144 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Regis Senac, " Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two 
Americas," a distinction gained by him, along with the sum of 
five hundred dollars, at Tammany Hall, New York, on the loth 
April, 1876. 
5 I hurried over my midday meal, and was early forth again. 
But, alas, as we climbed the interminable hill upon the other 
side, " Proot ! " seemed to have lost its virtue. I prooted like a 
lion, I prooted mellifluously like a sucking dove ; but Modestine 
would be neither softened nor intimidated. She held doggedly 

10 to her pace ; nothing but a blow would move her, and that only 
for a second. I must follow at her heels, incessantly belabor- 
ing. A moment's pause in this ignoble toil, and she relapsed 
into her own private gait. I think I never heard of any one in 
as mean a situation. I must reach the lake of Bouchet, where 

15 I meant to camp, before sundown, and, to have even a hope of 
this, I must instantly maltreat this uncomplaining animal. The 
sound of my own blows sickened me. Once, when I looked at 
her, she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance 
who formerly loaded me with kindness ; and this increased my 

20 horror of my cruelty. 

To make matters worse, we encountered another donkey, 
ranging at will upon the roadside ; and this other donkey 
chanced to be a gentleman. He and Modestine met nickering 
for joy, and I had to separate the pair and beat down their 

25 young romance with a renewed and feverish bastinado. If the 
other donkey had had the heart of a male under his hide, he 
would have fallen upon me tooth and hoof ; and this was a 
kind of consolation — he was plainly unworthy of Modestine's 
affection. But the incident saddened me, as did everything that 

30 spoke of my donkey's sex. 

It was blazing hot up the valley, windless, with vehement sun 
upon my shoulders ; and I had to labor so consistently with 
my stick that the sweat ran into my eyes. Every five minutes, 
too, the pack, the basket, and the pilot coat would take an ugly 



VELAY 145 

slew to one side or the other ; and I had to stop Modestine, 
just when I had got her to a tolerable pace of about two miles 
an hour, to tug, push, shoulder, and readjust the load. And at 
last, in the village of Ussel, saddle and all, the whole hypothec 
turned round and groveled in the dust below the donkey's belly. 5 
She, none better pleased, incontinently drew up and seemed to 
smile ; and a party of one man, two women, and two children 
came up, and, standing round me in a half circle, encouraged 
her by their example. 

I had the devil's own trouble to get the thing righted ; and 10 
the instant I had done so, without hesitation,, it toppled and fell 
down upon the other side. Judge if I was hot ! And yet not 
a hand was offered to assist me. The man, indeed, told me I 
ought to have a package of a different shape. I suggested, if 
he knew nothing better to the point in my predicament, he 15 
might hold his tongue. And the good-natured dog agreed with 
me smilingly. It was the most despicable fix. I must plainly 
content myself with the pack for Modestine, and take the follow- 
ing items for my own share of the portage : a cane, a quart 
flask, a pilot jacket heavily weighted in the pockets, two pounds 20 
of black bread, and an open basket full of meats and bottles. 
I believe I may say I am not devoid of greatness of soul ; for 
I did not recoil from this infamous burthen. I disposed it. 
Heaven knows how, so as to be mildly portable, and then pro- 
ceeded to steer Modestine through the village. She tried, as 25 
was indeed her invariable habit, to enter every house and every 
courtyard in the whole length ; and, encumbered as I was, with- 
out a hand to help myself, no words can render an idea of my 
difficulties. A priest, with six or seven others, was examining 
a church in process of repair, and he and his acolytes laughed 30 
loudly as they saw my plight. I remembered having laughed 
myself when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in 
the person of a jackass, and the recollection filled me with peni- 
tence. That was in my old light days, before this trouble came 



146 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

upon me. God knows at least that I shall never laugh again, 
thought I. But O, what a cruel thing is a farce to those 
engaged in it ! 

A litde out of the village, Modestine, filled with the demon, 
5 set her heart upon a byroad, and positively refused to leave it. 
I dropped all my bundles, and, I am ashamed to say, struck 
the poor sinner twice across the face. It was pitiful to see her 
lift up her head with shut eyes, as if waiting for another blow. 
I came very near crying ; but I did a wiser thing than that, and 

10 sat squarely down by the roadside to consider my situation 
under the cheerful influence of tobacco and a nip of brandy. 
Modestine, in the meanwhile, munched some black bread with 
a contrite hypocritical air. It was plain that I must make a sac- 
rifice to the gods of shipwreck. I threw away the empty bottle 

1 5 destined to carry milk ; I threw away my own white bread, and, 
disdaining to act by general average, kept the black bread for 
Modestine ; lastly, I threw away the cold leg of mutton and the 
egg whisk, although this last was dear to my heart. Thus I 
found room for everything in the basket, and even stowed the 

20 boating coat on the top. By means of an end of cord I slung it 
under one arm ; and although the cord cut my shoulder, and 
the jacket hung almost to the ground, it was with a heart greatly 
lightened that I set forth again. 

I had now an arm free to thrash Modestine, and cruelly I 

25 chastised her. If I were to reach the lakeside before dark, she 
must bestir her little shanks to some tune. Already the sun had 
gone down into a windy-looking mist ; and although there were 
still a few streaks of gold far off to the east on the hills and the 
black fir woods, all was cold and gray about our onward path. 

30 An infinity of little country byroads led hither and thither among 
the fields. It was the most pointless labyrinth. I could see my 
destination overhead, or rather the peak that dominates it ; but 
choose as I pleased, the roads always ended by turning away 
from it, and sneaking back towards the valley, or northward 



VELAY 147 

along the margin of the hills. The failing light, the waning 
color, the naked, unhomely, stony country through which I was 
traveling, threw me into some despondency. I promise you, the 
stick was not idle ; I think every decent step that Modestine took 
must have cost me at least two emphatic blows. There was not 5 
another sound in the neighborhood but that of my unwearying 
bastinado. 

Suddenly, in the midst of my toils, the load once more bit the 
dust, and, as by enchantment, all the cords were simultaneously 
loosened, and the road scattered with my dear possessions. The 10 
packing was to begin again from the beginning ; and as I had 
to invent a new and better system, I do not doubt but I lost 
half an hour. It began to be dusk in earnest as I reached a 
wilderness of turf and stones. It had the air of being a road 
which should lead everywhere at the same time ; and I was fall- 1 5 
ing into something not unlike despair when I saw two figures 
stalking towards me over the stones. They walked one behind 
the other like tramps, but their pace was remarkable. The son 
led the way, a tall, ill-made, somber, Scotch-looking man; the 
mother followed, all in her Sunday's best, with an elegantly 20 
embroidered ribbon to her cap, and a new felt hat atop, and 
proffering, as she strode along with kilted petticoats, a string 
of obscene and blasphemous oaths. 

I hailed the son and asked him my direction. He pointed 
loosely west and northwest, muttered an inaudible comment, 25 
and, without slacking his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he 
was going, right athwart my path. The mother followed with- 
out so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after 
them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf 
ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine by herself, I was 30 
constrained to run after them, hailing the while. They stopped 
as I drew near, the mother still cursing; and I could see she 
was a handsome, motherly, respectable-looking woman. The 
son once more answered me roughly and inaudibly, and was 



148 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

for setting out again. But this time I simply collared the 
mother, who was nearest me, and, apologizing for my violence, 
declared that I could not let them go until they had put me on 
my road. They were neither of them offended — rather mollified 
5 than otherwise ; told me I had only to follow them ; and then 
the mother asked me what I wanted by the lake at such an hour. 
I replied, in the Scotch manner, by inquiring if she had far to go 
herself. She told me, with another oath, that she had an hour 
and a half's road before her. And then, without salutation, the 

10 pair strode forward again up the hillside in the gathering dusk. 

I returned for Modestine, pushed her briskly forward, and, 

after a sharp ascent of twenty minutes, reached the edge of a 

plateau. The view, looking back on my day's journey, was both 

wild and sad. Mount Me'zenc and the peaks beyond St. Julien 

1 5 stood out in trenchant gloom against a cold glitter in the east ; 
and the intervening field of hills had fallen together into one 
broad wash of shadow, except here and there the outline of a 
wooded sugar loaf in black, here and there a white irregular patch 
to represent a cultivated farm, and here and there a blot where 

20 the Loire, the Gazeille, or the Lausonne wandered in a gorge. 

Soon we were on a highroad, and surprise seized on my mind 

as I beheld a village of some magnitude close at hand ; for I 

had been told that the neighborhood of the lake was uninhabited 

except by trout. The road smoked in the twilight with children 

25 driving home cattle from the fields ; and a pair of mounted 
stride-legged women, hat and cap and all, dashed past me at a 
hammering trot from the canton where they had been to church 
and market. I asked one of the children where I was. At 
Bouchet St. Nicolas, he told me. Thither, about a mile south 

30 of my destination, and on the other side of a respectable sum- 
mit, had these confused roads and treacherous peasantry con- 
ducted me. My shoulder was cut, so that it hurt sharply ; my 
arm ached like toothache from perpetual beating; I gave up 
the lake and my design to camp, and asked for the auberge. 



I HAVE A GOAD 

The auberge of Bouchet St. Nicolas was among the least pre- 
tentious I have ever visited ; but I saw many more of the like 
upon my journey. Indeed, it was typical of these French high- 
lands. Imagine a cottage of two stories, with a bench before 
the door ; the stable and kitchen in a suite, so that Modestine 5 
and I could hear each other dining ; furniture of the plainest, 
earthen floors, a single bedchamber for travelers, and that with- 
out any convenience but beds. In the kitchen cooking and 
eating go forward side by side, and the family sleep at night. 
Any one who has a fancy to wash must do so in public at 10 
the common table. The food is sometimes spare ; hard fish 
and omelette have been my portion more than once ; the 
wine is of the smallest, the brandy abominable to man ; 
and the visit of a fat sow, grouting under the table and 
rubbing against your legs, is no impossible accompaniment 15 
to dinner. 

But the people of the inn, in nine cases out of ten, show 
themselves friendly and considerate. As soon as you cross the 
doors you cease to be a stranger ; and although this peasantry 
are rude and forbidding on the highway, they show a tincture 20 
of kind breeding when you share their hearth. At Bouchet, for 
instance, I uncorked my bottle of Beaujolais, and asked the 
host to join me. He would take but little. 

" I am an amateur of such wine, do you see ? " he said, 
" and I am capable of leaving you not enough." 25 

In these hedge inns the traveler is expected to eat with his 
own knife ; unless he ask, no other will be supplied ; with a 
glass, a whang of bread, and an iron fork, the table is com- 
pletely laid. My knife was cordially admired by the landlord of 
Bouchet, and the spring filled him with wonder. 30 

149 



I50 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

'' I should never have guessed that," he said. " I would bet," 
he added, weighing it in his hand, " that this cost you not less 
than five francs." 

When I told him it had cost me twenty, his jaw dropped. 
5 He was a mild, handsome, sensible, friendly old man, aston- 
ishingly ignorant. His wife, who was not so pleasant in her 
manners, knew how to read, although I do not suppose she 
ever did so. She had a share of brains and spoke with a cut- 
ting emphasis, like one who ruled the roast, 
lo " My man knows nothing," she said, with an angry nod ; 
" he is like the beasts." 

And the old gentleman signified acquiescence with his head. 
There was no contempt on her part, and no shame on his ; the 
facts were accepted loyally, and no more about the matter. 
15 I was tightly cross-examined about my journey ; and the lady 
understood in a moment, and sketched out what I should put 
into my book when I got home. " Whether people harvest or 
not in such or such a place ; if there were forests ; studies of 
manners ; what, for example, I and the master of the house say 
20 to you ; the beauties of Nature, and all that." And she interro- 
gated me with a look. 

" It is just that," said I. 

" You see," she added to her husband, " I understood that." 

They were both much interested by the story of my mis- 
25 adventures. 

" In the morning," said the husband, '' I will make you some- 
thing better than your cane. Such a beast as that feels nothing ; 
it is in the proverb — d//r comme tin due ; you might beat her 
insensible with a cudgel, and yet you would arrive nowhere." 
30 Something better I I little knew what he was offering. 

The sleeping room was furnished with two beds. I had one ; 
and I will own I was a little abashed to find a young man and 
his wife and child in the act of mounting into the other. This 
was my first experience of the sort ; and if I am always to feel 



VELAY . 151 

equally silly and extraneous, I pray God it be my last as well. 
I kept my eyes to myself, and know nothing of the woman ex- 
cept that she had beautiful arms, and seemed no whit abashed 
by my appearance. As a matter of fact, the situation was more 
trying to me than to the pair. A pair keep each other in coun- 5 
tenance ; it is the single gentleman who has to blush. But I 
could not help attributing my sentiments to the husband, and 
sought to conciliate his tolerance with a cup of brandy from my 
flask. He told me that he was a cooper of Alais traveling to St. 
fitienne in search of work, and that in his spare moments he 10 
followed the fatal calling of a maker of matches. Me he readily 
enough divined to be a brandy merchant. 

I was up first in the morning (Monday, September 23d), and 
hastened my toilet guiltily, so as to leave a clear field for madam, 
the cooper's wife. I drank a bowl of milk, and set off to explore 1 5 
the neighborhood of Bouchet. It was perishing cold, a gray, 
windy, wintry morning ; misty clouds flew fast and low ; the 
wind piped over the naked platform ; and the only speck of 
color was away behind Mount Me'zenc and the eastern hills, 
where the sky still wore the orange of the dawn. 20 

It was five in the morning, and four thousand feet above the 
sea ; and I had to bury my hands in my pockets and trot. People 
were trooping out to the labors of the field by twos and threes, 
and all turned round to stare upon the stranger. I had seen 
them coming back last night, I saw them going afield again ; 2 5 
and there was the life of Bouchet in a nutshell. 

When I came back to the inn for a bit of breakfast, the land- 
lady was in the kitchen combing out her daughter's hair ; and I 
made her my compliments upon its beaut}^ 



■Oh, no," said the mother: '' it is not so beautiful as it ousrht 



30 



to be. Look, it is too fine." 

Thus does a wise peasantry console itself under adverse phys- 
ical circumstances, and, by a startling democratic process, the 
defects of the majority decide the type of beauty. 



152 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

'" And where," said I, '' is monsieur ? " 

" The master of the house is upstairs," she answered, 
" making you a goad." 

Blessed be the man who invented goads ! Blessed the inn 
5 keeper of Bouchet St. Nicolas, who introduced me to their use ! 
This plain wand, with an eighth of an inch of pin, was indeed a 
scepter when he put it in my hands. Thenceforward Modestine 
was my slave. A prick, and she passed the most inviting stable 
door. A prick, and she broke forth into a gallant little trotlet 

lo that devoured the miles. It was not a remarkable speed, when 
all was said ; and we took four hours to cover ten miles at the 
best of it. . But what a heavenly change since yesterday ! No 
more wielding of the ugly cudgel ; no more flailing with an ach- 
ing arm ; no more broadsword exercise, but a discreet and gentle- 

1 5 manly fence. And what although now and then a drop of blood 
should appear on Modestine's mouse-colored wedgelike rump ? 
I should have preferred it otherwise, indeed ; but yesterday's ex- 
ploits had purged my heart of all humanity. The perverse little 
devil, since she would not be taken with kindness, must even go 

2o with pricking. 

It was bleak and bitter cold, and, except a cavalcade of stride- 
legged ladies and a pair of post runners, the road was dead soli- 
tary all the way to Pradelles. I scarce remember an incident but 
one. A handsome foal with a bell about his neck came charging 

25 up to us upon a stretch of common, sniffed the air martially as 
one about to do great deeds, and, suddenly thinking otherwise 
in his green young heart, put about and galloped off as he had 
come, the bell tinkling in the wind. For a long while afterwards 
I saw his noble attitude as he drew up, and heard the note of 

30 his bell; and when I struck the highroad, the song of the tele- 
graph wires seemed to continue the same music. Pradelles 
stands on a hillside, high above the Allier, surrounded by rich 
meadows. They were cutting aftermath on all sides, which gave 
the neighborhood, this gusty autumn morning, an untimely smell 



VELAY 153 

of hay. On the opposite bank of the Allier the land kept mount- 
ing for miles to the horizon : a tanned and sallow autumn land- 
scape, with black blots of fir wood and white roads wandering 
through the hills. Over all this the clouds shed a uniform and 
purplish .shadow, sad and somewhat menacing, exaggerating 5 
height and distance, and throwing into still higher relief the 
twisted ribbons of the highway. It was a cheerless prospect, 
but one stimulating to a traveler. For I was now upon the 
limit of Velay, and all that I beheld lay in another county — 
wild Gevaudan, mountainous, uncultivated, and but recently 10 
disforested from terror of the wolves. 

Wolves, alas, like bandits, seem to flee the traveler's advance ; 
and you may trudge through all our comfortable Europe, and 
not meet with an adventure worth the name. But here, if any- 
where, a man was on the frontiers of hope. For this was the 15 
land of the ever-memorable Beast, the Napo1eo7i Buonapa^ie of 
wolves. What a career was his ? He lived ten months at free 
quarters in Gevaudan and Vivarais ; he ate women and children 
and " shepherdesses celebrated for their beauty "; he pursued 
armed horsemen ; he has been seen at broad noonday chasing 20 
a post chaise and outrider along the king's highroad, and chaise 
and outrider fleeing before him at a gallop. He was placarded like 
a political offender, and ten thousand francs were offered for his 
head. And yet, when he was shot and sent to Versailles, behold ! 
a common v/olf, and even small for that. ^' Though I could 25 
reach from pole to pole," sang Alexander Pope ; the little 
corporal shook Europe ; and if all wolves had been as this wolf, 
they would have changed the history of man. M. Elie Berthet 
has made him the hero of a novel, which I have read, and do 
not wish to read again. 30 

I hurried over my lunch, and was proof against the landlady's 
desire that I should visit our Lady of Pradelles, " who performed 
many miracles, although she was of wood "; and before three 
quarters of an hour I was goading Modestine down the steep 



154 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

descent that leads to Langogne on the Allier. On both sides of 
the road, in big dusty fields, farmers were preparing for next 
spring. Every fifty yards a yoke of great-necked stolid oxen 
were patiently haling at the plow. I saw one of these mild, 

5 formidable servants of the glebe, who took a sudden interest in 
Modestine and me. The furrow down which he was journeying 
lay at an angle to the road, and his head was solidly fixed to the 
yoke like those of caryatides below a ponderous cornice ; but 
he screwed round his big honest eyes and followed us with a 

lo ruminating look, until his master bade him turn the plow and 
proceed to reascend the field. From all these furrowing plow- 
shares, from the feet of oxen, from a laborer here and there 
who was breaking the dry clods with a hoe, the wind carried 
away a thin dust like so much smoke. It was a fine, busy, 

1 5 breathing, rustic landscape ; and as I continued to descend, the 
highlands of G^vaudan kept mounting in front of me against 
the sky. 

I had crossed the Loire the day before ; now I was to cross 
the Allier ; so near are these two confluents in their youth. Just 

20 at the bridge of Langogne, as the long-promised rain was begin- 
ning to fall, a lassie of some seven or eight addressed me in the 
sacramental phrase, '^D'ou'st que vous venez ? " She did it with 
so high an air that she set me laughing ; and this cut her to the 
quick. She was evidently one who reckoned on respect, and 

25 stood looking after me in silent dudgeon, as I crossed the bridge 
and entered the county of Ge'vaudan. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 

A CAMP IN THE DARK 

The next day (Tuesday, September 24th), it was two o'clock 
in the afternoon before I got my journal written up and my 
knapsack repaired, for I was determined to carry my knapsack 
in the future and have no more ado with baskets ; and half an 
hour afterwards I set out for Le Cheylard I'Eveque, a place 5 
on the borders of the forest of Mercoire. A man, I was told, 
should walk there in an hour and a half ; and I thought it 
scarce too ambitious to suppose that a man encumbered with 
a donkey might cover the same distance in four hours. 

All the way up the long hill from Langogne it rained and 10 
hailed alternately ; the wind kept freshening steadily, although 
slowly ; plentiful hurrying clouds — some dragging veils of 
straight rain shower, others massed and luminous, as though 
promising snow — careered out of the north and followed me 
along my way. I was soon out of the cultivated basin of the 15 
Allier, and away from the plowing oxen, and suchlike sights 
of the country. Moor, heathery marsh, tracts of rock and pines, 
woods of birch all jeweled with the autumn yellow, here and 
there a few naked cottages and bleak fields, — these were the 
characters of the country. Hill and valley followed valley and 20 
hill ; the little green and stony cattle tracks wandered in and out 
of one another, split into three or four, died away in marshy 
hollows, and began again sporadically on hillsides or at the 
borders of a wood. 

There was no direct road to Cheylard, and it was no easy 25 
affair to make a passage in this uneven country and through 
this interm.ittent labyrinth of tracks. It must have been about 

15s 



156 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

four when I struck Sagnerousse, and went on my way rejoicing 
in a sure point of departure. Two hours afterwards, the dusk 
rapidly falling, in a lull of the wind, I issued from a fir wood 
where I had long been wandering, and found, not the looked-for 
5 village, but another marish bottom among rough-and-tumble 
hills. For some time past I had heard the ringing of cattle bells 
ahead ; and now, as I came out of the skirts of the wood, I saw 
near upon a dozen cows and perhaps as many more black 
figures, which I conjectured to be children, although the mist 

10 had almost unrecognizably exaggerated their forms. These 
were all silently following each other round and round in a 
circle, now taking hands, now breaking up with chains and 
reverences. A dance of children appeals to very innocent and 
lively thoughts ; but, at nightfall on the marshes, the thing was 

15 eerie and fantastic to behold. Even I, who am well enough read 
in Herbert Spencer, felt a sort of silence fall for an instant 
on my mind. The next, I was pricking Modestine forward, and 
guiding her like an unruly ship through the open. In a path, 
she went doggedly ahead of her own accord, as before a fair 

20 wind ; but once on the turf or among heather, and the brute 
became demented. The tendency of lost travelers to go round 
in a circle was developed in her to the degree of passion, and 
it took all the steering I had in me to keep even a decently 
straight course through a single field. 

25 While I was thus desperately tacking through the bog, chil- 
dren and catde began to disperse, until only a pair of girls 
remained behind. From these I sought direction on my path. 
The peasantry in general were but little disposed to counsel a 
wayfarer. One old devil simply retired into his house, and barri- 

30 cated the door on my approach; and I might beat and shout 
myself hoarse, he turned a deaf ear. Another, having given me 
a direction which, as I found afterwards, I had misunderstood, 
complacently watched me going wrong without adding a sign. 
He did not care a stalk of parsley if I wandered all night upon 



UPPER GEVAUDAN I 57 

the hills ! As for these two girls, they were a pair of impudent 
sly sluts, with not a thought but mischief. One put out her 
tongue at me, the other bade me follow the cows ; and they 
both giggled and jogged each other's elbows. The Beast of 
Ge'vaudan ate about a hundred children of this district ; I be- 5 
gan to think of him with sympathy. 

Leaving the girls, I pushed on through the bog, and got into 
another wood and upon a well-marked road. It grew darker 
and darker. Modestine, suddenly beginning to smell mischief, 
bettered the pace of her own accord, and from that time for- 10 
ward gave me no trouble. It was the first sign of ifitelligence 
I had occasion to remark in her. At the same time, the wind 
freshened into half a gale, and another heavy discharge of rain 
came flying up out of the north. At the other side of the wood I 
sighted some red windows in the dusk. This was the hamlet of 1 5 
Fouzilhic ; three houses on a hillside, near a wood of birches. Here 
I found a delightful old man, who came a little way with me in the 
rain to put me safely on the road for Cheylard. He would hear 
of no reward ; but shook his hands above his head almost as if in 
menace, and refused volubly and shrilly, in unmitigated /^/(^/j. 20 

All seemed right at last. My thoughts began to turn upon 
dinner and a fireside, and my heart was agreeably softened in 
my bosom. Alas, and I was on the brink of new and greater 
miseries ! Suddenly, at a single swoop, the night fell. I have 
been abroad in many a black night, but never in a blacker. A 25 
glimmer of rocks, a glimmer of the track where it was well 
beaten, a certain fleecy density, or night within night, for a 
tree, — this was all that I could discriminate. The sky was 
simply darkness overhead ; even the flying clouds pursued their 
way invisibly to human eyesight. I could not distinguish my 30 
hand at arm's length from the track, nor my goad, at the same 
distance, from the meadows or the sky. 

Soon the road that I was following split, after the fashion of 
the country, into three or four in a piece of rocky meadow. 



158 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Since Modestine had shown such a fancy for beaten roads, I 
tried her instinct in this predicament. But the instinct of an ass 
is what might be expected from the name ; in half a minute she 
was clambering round and round among some bowlders, as lost 
5 a donkey as you would wish to see. I should have camped long 
before had I been properly provided ; but as this was to be so 
short a stage, I had brought no wine, no bread for myself, and 
a little over a pound for my lady friend. Add to this, that I and 
Modestine were both handsomely wetted by the showers. But 

lo now, if I could have found some water, I should have camped 
at once in spite of all. Water, however, being entirely absent, 
except in the form of rain, I determined to return to Fouzilhic, 
and ask a guide a little further on my way — "a little farther 
lend thy guiding hand." 

15 The thing was easy to decide, hard to accomplish. In this 
sensible roaring blackness I was sure of nothing but the direc- 
tion of the wind. To this I set my face ; the road had disap- 
peared, and I went across country, now in marshy opens, now 
baffled by walls unscalable to Modestine, until I came once more 

20 in sight of some red windows. This time they were differently 
disposed. It was not Fouzilhic, but Fouzilhac, a hamlet little dis- 
tant from the other in space, but worlds away in the spirit of 
its inhabitants. I tied Modestine to a gate, and groped forward, 
stumbling among rocks, plunging mid-leg in bog, until I gained 

25 the entrance of the village. In the first lighted house there was 
a woman who would not open to me. She could do nothing, 
she cried to me through the door, being alone and lame ; but if 
I would apply at the next house, there was a man who could 
help me if he had a mind. 

30 They came to the next door in force, a man, two women, and 
a girl, and brought a pair of lanterns to examine the wayfarer. 
The man was not ill-looking, but had a shifty smile. He leaned 
against the doorpost, and heard me state my case. All I asked 
was a guide as far as C hey lard. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 159 

■^^C'esf ^7ie, voyez-vous^ il fait noir^^^ said he. 

I told him that was just my reason for requiring help. 

" I understand that," said he, looking uncomfortable ; '' mais 
— c''est — de la peine ^ 

I was willing to pay, I said. He shook his head. I rose as 5 
high as ten francs ; but he continued to shake his head. '' Name 
your own price, then," said I. 

''^ Ce 11' est pas pz," he said at length, and with evident diffi- 
culty ; '' but I am not going to cross the door — mais je ne 
sortirai pas de la porte. " 10 

I grew a little warm, and asked him what he proposed that 
I should do, 

" Where are you going beyond Cheylard .? " he asked by way 
of answer. 

" That is no affair of yours," I returned, for I was not going 15 
to indulge his bestial curiosity ; ''it changes nothing in my pres- 
ent predicament." 

"CVj-/ vrai, (:<?," he acknowledged, with a laugh ; '' oui, c'est 
vrai. Et d^oii venez-vous ? " 

A better man than I might have felt nettled. 20 

'* O," said I, '' I am not going to answer any of your ques- 
tions, so you may spare yourself the trouble of putting them. 
I am late enough already ; I want help. If you will not guide 
me yourself, at least help me to find some one else who will." 

" Hold on," he cried suddenly. " Was it not you who passed 25 
in the meadow while it was still day ? " 

'' Yes, yes," said the girl, whom I had not hitherto recognized ; 
" it was monsieur ; I told him to follow the cow." 

" As for you, mademoiselle," said I, '' you are a farceuse." 

" And," added the man, '' what the devil have you done to 30 
be still here .? " 

What the devil, indeed ! But there I was. " The great thing," 
said I, "is to make an end of it " ; and once more proposed 
that he should help me to find a guide. 



l6o TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" C 'est que,'' he said again, " c'est que — il fait noir." 
" Very well," said I ; '' take one of your lanterns." 
'' No," he cried, drawing a thought backward, and again in- 
trenching himself behind one of his former phrases ; '' I will 
5 not cross the door." 

I looked at him. I saw unaffected terror struggling on his 
face with unaffected shame ; he was smiling pitifully and wetting 
his lip with his tongue, like a detected schoolboy. I drew a 
brief picture of my state, and asked him what I was to do. 
lo " I don't know," he said ; '' I will not cross the door." 
Here was the Beast of Gevaudan, and no mistake. 
" Sir," said I, with my most commanding manners, '' you are 
a coward." 

And with that I turned my back upon the family party, who 

15 hastened to retire within their fortifications ; and the famous 

door was closed again, but not till I had overheard the sound of 

laughter. Filia barbara pate?' barba?io7\ Let me say it in the 

plural : the Beasts of Ge'vaudan. 

The lanterns had somewhat dazzled me, and I plowed dis- 
20 tressfully among stones and rubbish-heaps. All the other houses 
in the village were both dark and silent ; and though I knocked 
at here and there a door, my knocking was unanswered. It was 
a bad business ; I gave up Fouzilhac with my curses. The rain 
had stopped, and the wind, which still kept rising, began to dry my 
25 coat and trousers. " Very well," thought I, " water or no water, 
I must camp." But the first thing was to return to Modestine. 
I am pretty sure I was twenty minutes groping for my lady in the 
dark ; and if it had not been for the unkindly services of the bog, 
into which I once more stumbled, I might have still been groping 
30 for her at the dawn. My next business was to gain the shelter of 
a wood, for the wind was cold as well as boisterous. How, in this 
well-wooded district, I should have been so long in finding one, is 
another of the insoluble mysteries of this day's adventures ; but 
I will take my oath that I put near an hour to the discovery. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN l6l 

At last black trees began to show upon my left, and, sud- 
denly crossing the road, made a cave of unmitigated blackness 
right in front. I call it a cave without exaggeration ; to pass 
below that arch of leaves was like entering a dungeon. I felt 
about until my hand encountered a stout branch, and to this I 5 
tied Modestine, a haggard, drenched, desponding donkey. Then 
I lowered my pack, laid it along the wall on the margin of the 
road, and unbuckled the straps. I knew well enough where the 
lantern was •, but where were the candles ? I groped and groped 
among the tumbled articles, and, while I was thus groping, sud- 10 
denly I touched the spirit lamp. Salvation ! This would serve 
my turn as well. The wind roared unwearyingly among the 
trees ; I could hear the boughs tossing and the leaves churning 
through half a mile of forest ; yet the scene of my encampment 
was not only as black as the pit, but admirably sheltered. At 15 
the second match the wick caught flame. The light was both 
livid and shifting; but it cut me off from the universe, and 
doubled the darkness of the surrounding night. 

I tied Modestine more conveniently for herself, and broke 
up half the black bread for her supper, reserving the other half 20 
against the morning. Then I gathered what I should want 
within reach, took off my wet boots and gaiters, which I wrapped 
in my waterproof, arranged my knapsack for a pillow under the 
flap of my sleeping bag, insinuated my limbs into the interior, 
and buckled myself in like a bambino. I opened a tin of Bologna 25 
sausage and broke a cake of chocolate, and that was all I had 
to eat. It may sound offensive, but I ate them together, bite by 
bite, by way of bread and meat. All I had to wash down this 
revolting mixture was neat brandy : a revolting beverage in it- 
self. But I was rare and hungry ; ate well, and smoked one of 30 
the best cigarettes in my experience. Then I put a stone in my 
straw hat, pulled the flap of my fur cap over my neck and eyes, 
put my revolver ready to my hand, and snuggled well down 
among the sheepskins. 



l62 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

I questioned at first if I were sleepy, for I felt my heart 
beating faster than usual, as if with an agreeable excitement to 
which my mind remained a stranger. But as soon as my eye- 
lids touched, that subtle glue leaped between them, and they 
5 would no more come separate. 

The wind among the trees was my lullaby. Sometimes it 
sounded for minutes together with a steady even rush, not 
rising nor abating; and again it would swell and burst like a 
great crashing breaker, and the trees would patter me all over 

lo with big drops from the rain of the afternoon. Night after 
night, in my own bedroom in the country, I have given ear to 
this perturbing concert of the wind among the woods ; but 
whether it was a difference in the trees, or the lie of the ground, 
or because I was myself outside and in the midst of it, the fact 

15 remains that the wind sang to a different tune among these 
woods of Gevaudan. I hearkened and hearkened ; and mean- 
while sleep took gradual possession of my body and subdued 
my thoughts and senses ; but still my last waking effort was to 
listen and distinguish, and my last conscious state was one of 

20 wonder at the foreign clamor in my ears. 

Twice in the course of the dark hours — once when a stone 
galled me underneath the sack, and again when the poor patient 
Modestine, growing angry, pawed and stamped upon the road 
— I was recalled for a brief while to consciousness, and saw 

25 a star or two overhead, and the lacelike edge of the foliage 
against the sky. When I awoke for the third time (Wednesday, 
September 25 th), the world was flooded with a blue light, the 
mother of the dawn. I saw the leaves laboring in the wind 
and the ribbon of the road; and, on turning my head, there 

30 was Modestine tied to a beech, and standing half across the path 
in an attitude of inimitable patience. I closed my eyes again, 
and set to thinking over the experience of the night. I was sur- 
prised to find how easy and pleasant it had been, even in this 
tempestuous weather. The stone which annoyed me would not 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 1 63 

have been there, had I not been forced to camp blindfold in 
the opaque night ; and I had felt no other inconvenience, 
except when my feet encountered the lantern or the second 
volume of Peyrat's " Pastors of the Desert " among the mixed 
contents of my sleeping bag ; nay more, I had felt not a 5 
touch of cold, and awakened with unusually lightsome and 
clear sensations. 

With that, I shook myself, got once more into my boots and 
gaiters, and, breaking up the rest of the bread for Modestine, 
strolled about to see in what part of the world I had awakened. 10 
Ulysses, left on Ithaca, and with a mind unsettled by the god- 
dess, was not more pleasantly astray. I have been after an 
adventure all my life, a pure dispassionate adventure, such as 
befell early and heroic voyagers ; and thus to be found by morn- 
ing in a random woodside nook in Ge'vaudan — not knowing 1 5 
north from south, as strange to my surroundings as the first 
man upon the earth, an inland castaway — was to find a fraction 
of my daydreams realized. I was on the skirts of a little wood 
of birch, sprinkled with a few beeches ; behind, it adjoined 
another wood of fir ; and in front, it broke up and went down 20 
in open order into a shallow and meadowy dale. All around 
there were bare hilltops, some near, some far away, as the per- 
spective closed or opened, but none apparently much higher than 
the rest. The wind huddled the trees. The golden specks of 
autumn in the birches tossed shiveringly. Overhead the sky 25 
was full of strings and shreds of vapor, flying, vanishing, re- 
appearing, and turning about an axis like tumblers, as the wind 
hounded them through heaven. It was wild weather and famish- 
ing cold. I ate some chocolate, swallowed a mouthful of brandy, 
and smoked a cigarette before the cold should have time to dis- 30 
able my fingers. And by the time I had got all this done, and 
had made my pack and bound it on the packsaddle, the day 
was tiptoe on the threshold of the east. We had not gone 
many steps along the lane, before the sun, still invisible to 



l64 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

me, sent a glow of gold over some cloud mountains that lay 
ranged along the eastern sky. 

The wind had us on the stern, and hurried us bitingly for- 
ward. I buttoned myself into my coat, and walked on in a 
5 pleasant frame of mind with all men, when suddenly, at a 
corner, there was Fouzilhic once more in front of me. Nor 
only that, but there was the old gentleman who had escorted 
me so far the night before, running out of his house at sight 
of me, with hands upraised in horror, 
lo " My poor boy ! " he cried, " what does this mean ? " 

I told him what had happened. He beat his old hands like 
clappers in a mill, to think how lightly he had let me go ; but 
when he heard of the man of Fouzilhac, anger and depression 
seized upon his mind. 
15 " This time, at least," said he, " there shall be no mistake." 

And he limped along, for he was very rheumatic, for about 
half a mile, and until I was almost within sight of Cheylard, 
the destination I had hunted for so long. 



CHEYLARD AND LUC 

Candidly, it seemed litde worthy of all this searching. A few- 
broken ends of village, with no particular street, but a succes- 
sion of open places heaped with logs and fagots ; a couple of 
tilted crosses, a shrine to our Lady of all Graces on the summit 
of a little hill ; and all this, upon a rattling highland river, in the 5 
corner of a naked valley. What went ye out for to see ? thought 
I to myself. But the place had a life of its own. I found a 
board commemorating the liberalities of Cheylard for the past 
year, hung up, like a banner, in the diminutive and tottering 
church. In 1877, it appeared, the inhabitants subscribed forty- 10 
eight francs ten centimes for the " Work of the Propagation of 
the Faith." Some of this, I could not help hoping, would be 
applied to my native land. Cheylard scrapes together halfpence 
for the darkened souls in Edinburgh ; while Balquidder and 
Dunrossness bemoan the ignorance of Rome. Thus, to the high 1 5 
entertainment of the angels, do we pelt each other with evange- 
lists, like schoolboys bickering in the snow. 

The inn was again singularly unpretentious. The whole 
furniture of a not ill-to-do family was in the kitchen : the 
beds, the cradle, the clothes, the plate rack, the meal chest, 20 
and the photograph of the parish priest. There were five 
children, one of whom was set to its morning prayers at the 
stair foot soon after my arrival, and a sixth would erelong 
be forthcoming. I was kindly received by these good folk. 
They were much interested in my misadventure. The wood 25 
in which I had slept belonged to them ; the man of Fouzilhac 
they thought a monster of iniquity, and counseled me warmly 
to summon him at law — ''because I might have died." The 
good wife was horror-stricken to see me drink over a pint of 
uncreamed milk. 30 

165 



1 66 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" You will do yourself an evil," said she. " Permit me to 
boil it for you." 

After I had begun the morning on this delightful liquor, she 
having an infinity of things to arrange, I was permitted, nay 
5 requested, to make a bowl of chocolate for myself. My boots 
and gaiters were hung up to dry, and, seeing me trying to write 
my journal on my knee, the eldest daughter let down a hinged 
table in the chimney corner for my convenience. Here I wrote, 
drank my chocolate, and finally ate an omelette before I left. 

lo The table was thick with dust ; for, as they explained, it was 
not used except in winter weather. I had a clear look up the 
vent, through brown agglomerations of soot and blue vapor, to 
the sky ; and whenever a handful of twigs was thrown on to 
the fire, my legs were scorched by the blaze, 

1 5 The husband had begun life as a muleteer, and when I came 

to charge Modestine showed himself full of the prudence of his 

art. " You will have to change this package," said he ; " it ought 

to be in two parts, and then you might have double the weight." 

I explained that I wanted no more weight ; and for no donkey 

2o hitherto created would I cut my sleeping bag in two. 

" It fatigues her, however," said the innkeeper ; " it fatigues 
her greatly on the march. Look." 

Alas, there were her two forelegs no better than raw beef on 
the inside, and blood was running from under her tail. They told 

25 me when I left, and I was ready to believe it, that before a few 
days I should come to love Modestine like a dog. Three days 
had passed, we had shared some misadventures, and my heart 
was still as cold as a potato towards my beast of burthen. She 
was pretty enough to look at ; but then she had given proof of 

30 dead stupidity, redeemed indeed by patience, but aggravated by 
flashes of sorry and ill-judged light-heartedness. And I own this 
new discovery seemed another point against her. What the devil 
was the good of a she-ass if she could not carry a sleeping bag 
and a few necessaries? I saw the end of the fable rapidly 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 1 6/ 

approaching, when I should have to carry Modestine. yEsop 
was the man to know the world ! I assure you I set out with 
heavy thoughts upon my short day's march. 

It was not only heavy thoughts about Modestine that weighted 
me upon the way ; it was a leaden business altogether. For first, 5 
the wind blew so rudely that I had to hold on the pack with one 
hand from Cheylard to Luc ; and second, my road lay through 
one of. the most beggarly countries in the world. It was like the 
worst of the Scotch Highlands, only worse ; cold, naked, and 
ignoble, scant of wood, scant of heather, scant of life. A road 10 
and some fences broke the unvarying waste, and the line of the 
road was marked by upright pillars, to serve in time of snow. 

Why any one should desire to visit either Luc or Cheylard is 
more than my much-inventing spirit can suppose. For my part, 
I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's 15 
sake. The great affair is to move ; to feel the needs and hitches 
of our life more nearly ; to come down off' this feather bed of 
civilization, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with 
cutting flints. Alas, as we get up in life, and are more pre- 
occupied with our affairs, even a holiday is a thing that must 20 
be worked for. To hold a pack upon a packsaddle against a 
gale out of the freezing north is no high industry, but it is one 
that serves to occupy and compose the mind. And when the 
present is so exacting, who can annoy himself about the future ? 

I came out at length above the Allier. A more unsightly 25 
prospect at this season of the year it would be hard to fancy. 
Shelving hills rose round it on all sides, here dabbled with wood 
and fields, there rising to peaks alternately naked and hairy with 
pines. The color throughout was black or ashen, and came to a 
point in the ruins of the castle of Luc, which pricked up impu- 30 
dently from below my feet, carrying on a pinnacle a tall white 
statue of our Lady, which, I heard with interest, weighed fifty 
quintals, and was to be dedicated on the 6th of October. 
Through this sorry landscape trickled the Allier and a tributary 



1 68 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

of nearly equal size, which came down to join it through a broad 
nude valley in Vivarais. The weather had somewhat lightened, 
and the clouds massed in squadron ; but the fierce wind still 
hunted them through heaven, and cast great ungainly splashes 

5 of shadow and sunlight over the scene. 

Luc itself was a straggling double file of houses wedged 
between hill and river. It had no beauty, nor was there any 
notable feature, save the old castle overhead with its fifty quin- 
tals of brand-new Madonna. But the inn was clean and large. 

o The kitchen, with its two box beds hung with clean check 
curtains, with its wide stone chimney, its chimney shelf four yards 
long and garnished with lanterns and religious statuettes, its 
array of chests and pair of ticking clocks, was the very model 
of what a kitchen ought to be ; a melodrama kitchen, suitable 

5 for bandits or noblemen in disguise. Nor was the scene dis- 
graced by the landlady, a handsome, silent, dark old woman, 
clothed and hooded in black like a nun. Even the public bedroom 
had a character of its own, with the long deal tables and benches, 
where fifty might have dined, set out as for a harvest home, and 

;o the three box beds along the wall. In one of these, lying on 
straw and covered with a pair of table napkins, did I do penance 
all night long in goose flesh and chattering teeth, and sigh from 
time to time as I awakened for my sheepskin sack and the lee 
of some great wood. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 
FATHER APOLLINARIS 

Next morning (Thursday, 26th September) I took the road in 
a new order. The sack was no longer doubled, but hung at full 
length across the saddle, a green sausage six feet long with a 
tuft of blue wool hanging out of either end. It was more pic- 
turesque, it spared the donkey, and, as I began to see, it would 5 
insure stability, blow high, blow low. But it was not without a 
pang that I had so decided. For although I had purchased a 
new cord, and made all as fast as I was able, I was yet jealously 
uneasy lest the flaps should tumble out and scatter my effects 
along the line of march. 10 

My way lay up the bald valley of the river, along the march 
of Vivarais and Gevaudan. The hills of Gevaudan on the right 
were a little more naked, if anything, than those of Vivarais 
upon the left, and the former had a monopoly of a low dotty 
underwood that grew thickly in the gorges and died out in soli- 15 
tary burrs upon the shoulders and the summits. Black bricks 
of fir wood were plastered here and there upon both sides, and 
here and there were cultivated fields. A railway ran beside the 
river ; the only bit of railway in GeVaudan, although there are 
many proposals afoot and surveys being made, and even, as 20 
they tell me, a station standing ready-built in Mende. A year 
or two hence and this may be another world. The desert is 
beleaguered. Now may some Languedocian Wordsworth turn 
the sonnet mto patois : '' Mountains and vales and floods, heard 
YE that whistle .? " 25 

At a place called La Bastide I was directed to leave the river, 
and follow a road that mounted on the left among the hills of 

169 



I/O 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 



Vivarais, the modern Ardeche; for I was now come within a 
little way of my strange destination, the Trappist monastery of 
our Lady of the Snows. The sun came out as I left the shelter 
of a pine wood, and I beheld suddenly a fine wild landscape to 
5 the south. High rocky hills, as blue as sapphire, closed the view, 
and between these lay ridge upon ridge, heathery, craggy, the 
sun glittering on veins of rock, the underwood clambering in the 
hollows, as rude as God made them at the first. There was not 
a sign of man's hand in all the prospect ; and indeed not a trace 

10 of his passage, save where generation after generation had 
walked in twisted footpaths, in and out among the beeches, 
and up and down upon the channeled slopes. The mists, which 
had hitherto beset me, were now broken into clouds, and fled 
swiftly and shone brightly in the sun. I drew a long breath. It 

1 5 was grateful to come, after so long, upon a scene of some attrac- 
tion for the human heart. I own I like definite form in what my 
eyes are to rest upon ; and if landscapes were sold, like the 
sheets of characters of my boyhood, one penny plain and two- 
pence colored, I should go the length of twopence every day of 

2o my life. 

But if things had grown better to the south, it was still deso- 
late and inclement near at hand. A spidery cross on every hill- 
top marked the neighborhood of a religious house ; and a quarter 
of a mile beyond, the outlook southward opening out and grow- 

25 ing bolder with every step, a white statue of the Virgin at the 
corner of a young plantation directed the traveler to our Lady 
of the Snows. Here, then, I struck leftward, and pursued my 
way, driving my secular donkey before me, and creaking in my 
secular boots and gaiters, towards the asylum of silence. 

30 I had not gone very far ere the wind brought to me the 
clanging of a bell, and somehow, I can scarce tell why, my 
heart sank within me at the sound. I have rarely approached 
anything with more unaffected terror than the monastery of 
our Lady of the Snows. This it is to have had a Protestant 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS I/I 

education. And suddenly, on turning a corner, fear took hold on 
me from head to foot — slavish superstitious fear ; and though I 
did not stop in my advance, yet I went on slowly, like a man 
who should have passed a bourn unnoticed, and strayed into 
the country of the dead. For there upon the narrow new-made 5 
road, between the stripling pines, was a medieval friar, fighting 
with a barrowful of turfs. Every Sunday of my childhood I 
used to study the ''Hermits" of Marco Sadeler — enchanting 
prints, full of wood and field and medieval landscapes, as large 
as a county, for the imagination to go a traveling in ; and here, 10 
sure enough, was one of Marco Sadeler's heroes. He was robed 
in white like any specter, and the hood falling back, in the 
instancy of his contention with the barrow, disclosed a pate as 
bald and yellow as a skull. He might have been buried any 
time these thousand years, and all the lively parts of him 15 
resolved into earth and broken up with the farmer's harrow. 

I was troubled besides in my mind as to etiquette. Durst I 
address a person who was under a vow of silence ? Clearly not. 
But drawing near, I doffed my cap to him with a far-away super- 
stitious reverence. He nodded back, and cheerfully addressed 20 
me. Was I going to the monastery ? Who was I ? An English- 
man } Ah, an Irishman, then } 

'' No," I said, '' a Scotsman." 

A Scotsman ? Ah, he had never seen a Scotsman before. 
And he looked me all over, his good, honest, brawny counte- 25 
nance shining with interest, as a boy might look upon a lion or 
an alligator. From him I learned with disgust that I could not 
be received at our Lady of the Snows ; I might get a meal, per- 
haps, but that was all. And then, as our talk ran on, and it 
turned out that I was not a peddler, but a literary man, who drew 30 
landscapes and was going to write a book, he changed his man- 
ner of thinking as to my reception (for I fear they respect per- 
sons even in a Trappist monastery), and told me I must be 
sure to ask for the Father Prior, and state my case to him in 



1/2 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

full. On second thoughts he determined to go down with me 
himself ; he thought he could manage for me better. Might he 
say that I was a geographer ? 

No ; I thought, in the interests of truth, he positively might 
5 not. 

" Very well, then " (with disappointment), " an author." 

It appeared he had been in a seminary with six young Irish- 
men, all priests long since, who had received newspapers and 
kept him informed of the state of ecclesiastical affairs in Eng- 
10 land. And he asked me eagerly after Dr. Pusey, for whose 
conversion the good man had continued ever since to pray 
night and morning. 

" I thought he was very near the truth," he said ; " and he 
will reach it yet ; there is so much virtue in prayer." 
15 He must be a stiff ungodly Protestant who can take any- 
thing but pleasure in this kind and hopeful story. While he was 
thus near the subject, the good father asked me if I were a 
Christian ; and when he found I was not, or not after his way, 
he glossed it over with great good will. 
20 The road which we were following, and which this stalwart 
father had made with his own two hands within the space of a 
year, came to a corner, and showed us some white buildings a 
little further on beyond the wood. At the same time, the bell 
once more sounded abroad. We were hard upon the monas- 
25 tery. Father Apollinaris (for that was my companion's name) 
stopped me. 

" I must not speak to you down there," he said. ''Ask for 
the Brother Porter, and all will be well. But try to see me as 
you go out again through the wood, where I may speak to you. 
30 I am charmed to have made your acquaintance." 

And then suddenly raising his arms, flapping his fingers, 
and crying out twice, " I must not speak, I must not speak ! " 
he ran away in front of me, and disappeared into the monas- 
tery door. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 1 73 

I own this somewhat ghastly eccentricity went a good way 
to revive my terrors. But where one was so good and simple, 
why should not all be alike ? I took heart of grace, and went 
forward to the gate as fast as Modestine, who seemed to have 
a disaffection for monasteries, would permit. It was the first 5 
door, in my acquaintance of her, which she had not shown an 
indecent haste to enter. I summoned the place in form, though 
with a quaking heart. Father Michael, the Father Hospitaler, 
and a pair of brown-robed brothers came to the gate and spoke 
with me awhile. I think my sack was the great attraction ; it 10 
had already beguiled the heart of poor Apollinaris, who had 
charged me on my life to show it to the Father Prior. But 
whether it was my address, or the sack, or the idea speedily 
published among that part of the brotherhood who attend on 
strangers that I was not a peddler after all, I found no diffi- 15 
culty as to my reception. Modestine was led away by a layman 
to the stables, and I and my pack were received into our Lady 
of the Snows. 



THE MONKS 

Father Michael, a pleasant, fresh-faced, smiling man, perhaps 
of thirty-five, took me to the pantry, and gave me a glass of 
liqueur to stay me until dinner. We had some talk, or rather I 
should say he listened to my prattle indulgently enough, but 
5 with an abstracted air, like a spirit with a thing of clay. And 
truly when I remember that I descanted principally on my ap- 
petite, and that it must have been by that time more than 
eighteen hours since Father Michael had so much as broken 
bread, I can well understand that he would find an earthly 

lo savor in my conversation. But his manner, though superior, 
was exquisitely gracious ; and I find I have a lurking curiosity 
as to Father Michael's past. 

The whet administered, I was left alone for a little in the 
monastery garden. This is no more than the main court, laid 

1 5 out in sandy paths and beds of party-colored dahlias, and with 
a fountain and a black statue of the Virgin in the center. The 
buildings stand around it foursquare, bleak, as yet unseasoned 
by the years and weather, and with no other features than a 
belfry and a pair of slated gables. Brothers in white, brothers in 

20 brown, passed silently along the sanded alleys ; and when I first 
came out, three hooded monks were kneeling on the terrace at 
their prayers. A naked hill commands the monastery upon one 
side, and the wood commands it on the other. It lies exposed 
to wind ; the snow falls off and on from October to May, and 

25 sometimes lies six weeks on end ; but if they stood in Eden, 
with a climate like heaven's, the buildings themselves would 
offer the same wintry and cheerless aspect; and for my part, 
on this wild September day, before I was called to dinner, I 
felt chilly in and out. 

30 When I had eaten well and heartily, Brother Ambrose, a 

174 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 175 

hearty conversable Frenchman (for all those who wait on 
strangers have the liberty to speak), led me to a little room in 
that part of the building which is set apart for MM. les retrai- 
ta?ifs. It was clean and whitewashed, and furnished with strict 
necessaries, a crucifix, a bust of the late Pope, the " Imitation " 5 
in French, a book of religious meditations, and the '' Life of 
Elizabeth Seton," evangelist, it would appear, of North Amer- 
ica and of New England in particular. As far as my experience 
goes, there is a fair field for some more evangelization in these 
quarters ; but think of Cotton Mather ! I should like to give 10 
him a reading of this little work in heaven, where I hope he 
dwells ; but perhaps he knows all that already, and much more ; 
and perhaps he and Mrs. Seton are the dearest friends, and 
gladly unite their voices in the everlasting psalm. Over the 
table, to conclude the inventory of the room, hung a set of 15 
regulations for ATM. les retraifants : what services they should 
attend, when they were to tell their beads or meditate, and when 
they were to rise and go to rest. At the foot was a notable 
N. B. : " Z^ temps libre est employe a Pexamen de conscience, a la 
confession, a /aire de bonnes resolutions,^^ etc. To make good 20 
resolutions, indeed ! You might talk as fruitfully of making the 
hair grow on your head. 

I had scarce explored m.y niche w^hen Brother Ambrose 
returned. An English boarder, it appeared, would like to speak 
with me. I professed my willingness, and the friar ushered 25 
in a fresh, young little Irishman of fifty, a deacon of the Church, 
arrayed in strict canonicals, and wearing on his head what, in 
default of knowledge, I can only call the ecclesiastical shako. 
He had lived seven years in retreat at a convent of nuns in 
Belgium, and now five at our Lady of the Snows ; he never saw 30 
an English newspaper ; he spoke French imperfectly, and had 
he spoken it like a native, there was not much chance of con- 
versation where he dwelt. With this, he was a man eminently 
sociable, greedy of news, and simple-minded like a child. If I 



1/6 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

was pleased to have a guide about the monastery, he was no less 
delighted to see an English face and hear an English tongue. 

He showed me his own room, where he passed his time 
among breviaries, Hebrew Bibles, and the Waverley novels. 
5 Thence he led me to the cloisters, into the chapter house, 
through the vestry, where the brothers' gowns and broad straw 
hats were hanging up, each with his religious name upon a 
board, — names full of legendary suavity and interest, such as 
Basil, Hilarion, Raphael, or Pacifique ; into the library, where 

lo were all the works of Veuillot and Chateaubriand, and the '' Odes 
et Ballades," if you please, and even Moliere, to say nothing of 
innumerable fathers and a great variety of local and general 
historians. Thence my good Irishman took me round the 
workshops, where brothers bake bread, and make cart wheels, 

1 5 and take photographs ; where one superintends a collection of 
curiosities, and another a gallery of rabbits. For in a Trappist 
monastery each monk has an occupation of his own choice, 
apart from his religious duties and the general labors of the 
house. Each must sing in the choir, if he has a voice and 

20 ear, and join in the haymaking if he has a hand to stir ; but in 
his private hours, although he must be occupied, he may be 
occupied on what he likes. Thus I was told that one brother 
was engaged with literature ; while Father Apollinaris busies 
himself in making roads, and the Abbot employs himself in 

25 binding books. It is not so long since this Abbot was consecrated, 
by the way ; and on that occasion, by a special grace, his mother 
was permitted to enter the chapel and witness the ceremony of 
consecration. A proud day for her to have a son a mitered 
abbot ; it makes you glad to think they let her in. 

30 In all these journeyings to and fro, many silent fathers and 
brethren fell in our way. Usually they paid no more regard to 
our passage than if we had been a cloud ; but sometimes the 
good deacon had a permission to ask of them, and it was granted 
by a peculiar movement of the hands, almost like that of a dog's 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 1 77 

paws in swimming, or refused by the usual negative signs, and 
in either case with lowered eyelids and a certain air of contrition, 
as of a man who was steering very close to evil. 

The monks, by special grace of their Abbot, were still taking 
two meals a day ; but it was already time for their grand fast, 5 
which begins somewhere in September and lasts till Easter, and 
during which they eat but once in the twenty-four hours, and that 
at two in the afternoon, twelve hours after they have begun the 
toil and vigil of the day. Their meals are scanty, but even of 
these they eat sparingly ; and though each is allowed a small 10 
carafe of wine, many refrain from this indulgence. Without 
doubt, the most of mankind grossly overeat themselves ; our 
meals serve not only for support, but as a hearty and natural 
diversion from the labor of life. Although excess may be hurtful, 
I should have thought this Trappist regimen defective. And I 15 
am astonished, as I look back, at the freshness of face and 
cheerfulness of manner of all whom I beheld. A happier nor 
a healthier company I should scarce suppose that I have ever 
seen. As a matter of fact, on this bleak upland, and with the 
incessant occupation of the monks, life is of an uncertain tenure, 20 
and death no infrequent visitor, at our Lady of the Snows. 
This, at least, was what was told me. But if they die easily, 
they must live healthily in the meantime, for they seemed all 
firm of flesh and high in color ; and the only morbid sign that 
I could observe, an unusual brilliancy of eye, was one that 25 
served rather to increase the general impression of vivacity 
and strength. 

Those with whom I spoke were singularly sweet-tempered, 
with what I can only call a holy cheerfulness in air and conver- 
sation. There is a note, in the direction to visitors, telling them 30 
not to be offended at the curt speech of those who wait upon 
them, since it is proper to monks to speak litde. The note 
might have been spared ; to a man the hospitalers were all 
brimming with innocent talk, and, in my experience of the 



178 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

monastery, it was easier to begin than to break off a conversa- 
tion. With the exception of Father Michael, who was a man 
of the world, they showed themselves full of kind and healthy 
interest in all sorts of subjects — in politics, in voyages, in my 
5 sleeping sack — and not without a certain pleasure in the sound 
of their own voices. 

As for those who are restricted to silence, I can only wonder 
how they bear their solemn and cheerless isolation. And yet, 
apart from any view of mortification, I can see a certain policy, 

lo not only in the exclusion of women, but in this vow of silence. I 
have had some experience of lay phalansteries, of an artistic, 
not to say a bacchanalian, character ; and seen more than one 
association easily formed, and yet more easily dispersed. With 
a Cistercian rule, perhaps they might have lasted longer. In the 

1 5 neighborhood of women it is but a touch-and-go association that 
can be formed among defenseless men ; the stronger electricity 
is sure to triumph ; the dreams of boyhood, the schemes of 
youth, are abandoned after an interview of ten minutes, and the 
arts and sciences, and professional male jollity, deserted at once 

2o for two sweet eyes and a caressing accent. And next after this, 
the tongue is the great divider. 

I am almost ashamed to pursue this worldly criticism of a 
religious rule ; but there is yet another point in which the Trap- 
pist order appeals to me as a model of wisdom. By two in the 

25 morning the clapper goes upon the bell, and so on, hour by 
hour, and sometimes quarter by quarter, till eight, the hour of 
rest ; so infinitesimally is the day divided among different occu- 
pations. The man who keeps rabbits, for example, hurries from 
his hutches to the chapel, the chapter room, or the refectory, all 

30 day long : every hour he has an office to sing, a duty to perform ; 
from two, when he rises in the dark, till eight, when he returns 
to receive the comfortable gift of sleep, he is upon his feet and 
occupied with manifold and changing business. I know many 
persons, worth several thousands in the year, who are not so 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 1 79 

fortunate in the disposal of their lives. Into how many houses 
would not the note of the monastery bell, dividing the day into 
manageable portions, bring peace of mind and healthful activity 
of body? We speak of hardships, but the true hardship is to 
be a dull fool, and permitted to mismanage life in our own dull 5 
and foolish manner. 

From this point of view, we may perhaps better understand 
the monk's existence. A long novitiate, and every proof of con- 
stancy of mind and strength of body is required before admission 
to the order ; but I could not find that many were discouraged. 10 
In the photographer's studio, which figures so strangely among 
the outbuildings, my eye was attracted by the portrait of a 
young fellow in the uniform of a private of foot. This was one 
of the novices, who came of the age for service, and marched 
and drilled and mounted guard for the proper time among the 15 
garrison of Algiers. Here was a man who had surely seen both 
sides of life before deciding ; yet as soon as he was set free 
from service he returned to finish his novitiate. 

This austere rule entitles a man to heaven as by right. 
When the Trappist sickens, he quits not his habit ; he lies in 20 
the bed of death as he has prayed and labored in his frugal 
and silent existence ; and when the Liberator comes, at the very 
moment, even before they have carried him in his robe to lie 
his little last in the chapel among continual chantings, joy bells 
break forth, as if for a marriage, from the slated belfry, and 25 
proclaim throughout the neighborhood that another soul has 
gone to God. 

At night, under the conduct of my kind Irishman, I took my 
place in the gallery to hear complin and Salve Regina^ with 
which the Cistercians bring every day to a conclusion. There 30 
were none of those circumstances which strike the Protestant 
as childish or as tawdry in the public offices of Rome. A stern 
simplicity, heightened by the romance of the surroundings, spoke 
directly to the heart. I recall the whitewashed chapel, the hooded 



l8o TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

figures in the choir, the lights alternately occluded and revealed, 
the strong manly singing, the silence that ensued, the sight of 
cowled heads bowed in prayer, and then the clear trenchant 
beating of the bell, breaking in to show that the last office was 
5 over and the hour of sleep had come ; and when I remember^ I 
am not surprised that I made my escape into the court with 
somewhat whirling fancies, and stood like a man bewildered in 
the windy starry night. J 

But I was weary ; and when I had quieted my spirits with 

lo Elizabeth Seton's memoirs — a dull work — the cold and the 

raving of the wind among the pines — for my room was on 

that side of the monastery which adjoins the woods — disposed 

me readily to slumber. I was wakened at black midnight, as 

it seemed, though it was really two in the morning, by the first 

15 stroke upon the bell. All the brothers were then hurrying to 

the chapel ; the dead in life, at this untimely hour, were already 

beginning the uncomforted labors of their day. The dead in 

life — there was a chill reflection. And the words of a French 

song came back into my memory, telling of the best of our 

20 mixed existence : 

Que t'as de belles filles, 

Girofle ! 

Girofia ! 

Que t'as de belles filles, 

25 UAfnour les compto'a I 

And I blessed God that I was free to wander, free to hope, 
and free to love. 



THE BOARDERS 

But there was another side to my residence at our Lady of 
the Snows. At this late season there were not many boarders ; 
and yet I was not alone in the public part of the monastery. 
This itself is hard by the gate, with a small dining room on the 
ground floor, and a whole corridor of cells similar to mine up- 5 
stairs. I have stupidly forgotten the board for a regular retrai- 
tant ; but it was somewhere between three and five francs a 
day, and I think most probably the first. Chance visitors like 
myself might give what they chose as a freewill offering, but 
nothing was demanded. I may mention that when I was going lo 
away, Father Michael refused twenty francs as excessive. I ex- 
plained the reasoning which led me to offer him so much ; but 
even then, from a curious point of honor, he would not accept 
it with his own hand. '' I have no right to refuse for the mon- 
astery," he explained, '' but I should prefer if you would give it 15 
to one of the brothers." 

I had dined alone, because I arrived late ; but at supper I 
found two other guests. One w^as a country parish priest, who 
had walked over that morning from the seat of his cure near 
Mende to enjoy four days of solitude and prayer. He was a 20 
grenadier in person, with the hale color and circular wrinkles of 
a peasant ; and as he complained much of how he had been 
impeded by his skirts upon the march, I have a vivid fancy 
portrait of him, striding along, upright, big-boned, with kilted 
cassock, through the bleak hills of Gevaudan. The other was a 25 
short, grizzling, thickset man, from forty-five to fifty, dressed in 
tweed with a knitted spencer, and the red ribbon of a decoration 
in his buttonhole. This last was a hard person to classify. He 
was an old soldier, who had seen service and risen to the rank 
of commandant ; and he retained some of the brisk decisive 30 



1 82 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

manners of the camp. On the other hand, as soon as his 
resignation was accepted, he had come to our Lady of the 
Snows as a boarder, and after a brief experience of its ways, 
had decided to remain as a novice. Already the new life was 
5 beginning to modify his appearance ; already he had acquired 
somewhat of the quiet and smiling air of the brethren; and he 
was as yet neither an officer nor a Trappist, but partook of the 
character of each. And certainly here was a man in an interest- 
ing nick of life. Out of the noise of cannon and trumpets, he 

lo was in the act of passing into this still country bordering on the 
grave, where men sleep nightly in their grave clothes, and, like 
phantoms, communicate by signs. 

At supper we talked politics. I make it my business, when I 
am in France, to preach political good will and moderation, and 

15 to dwell on the example of Poland, much as some alarmists 
in England dwell on the example of Carthage. The priest and 
the Commandant assured me of their sympathy with all I said, 
and made a heavy sighing over the bitterness of contemporary 
feeling. 

20 " Why, you cannot say anything to a man with which he 
does not absolutely agree," said I, " but he flies up at you 
in a temper." 

They both declared that such a state of things was antichristian. 
While we were thus agreeing, what should my tongue stum- 

25 ble upon but a word in praise of Gambetta's moderation. The 
old soldier's countenance was instantly suffused with blood ; with 
the palms of his hands he beat the table like a naughty child. 

'-'' Comment^ monsieur V he shouted. "^^ Co??i?ne?it ? Gambetta 
moderate .? Will you dare to justify these words .? " 

30 But the priest had not forgotten the tenor of our talk. And 
suddenly, in the height of his fury, the old soldier found a warn- 
ing look directed on his face ; the absurdity of his behavior was 
brought home to him in a flash ; and the storm came to an abrupt 
end, without another word. 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 1 83 

It was only in the morning, over our coffee (Friday, Septem- 
ber 27 th), that this couple found out I was a heretic, I suppose 
I had misled them by some admiring expressions as to the mo- 
nastic life around us ; and it was only by a point-blank question 
that the truth came out. I had been tolerantly used, both by 5 
simple Father Apollinaris and astute Father Michael ; and the 
good Irish deacon, when he heard of my religious weakness, 
had only patted me upon the shoulder and said, ^' You must be 
a Catholic and come to heaven." But I was now among a dif- 
ferent sect of orthodox. These two men were bitter and up- 10 
right and narrow, like the worst of Scotsmen, and indeed, upon 
my heart, I fancy they were worse. The priest snorted aloud 
like a battle horse. 

"^/ vous pretendez mourir dans cette espece de croyance ? " he 
demanded ; and there is no type used by mortal printers large 1 5 
enough to qualify his accent. 

I humbly indicated that I had no design of changing. 

But he could not away with such a monstrous attitude. '' No, 
no," he cried ; " you must change. You have come here, God 
has led you here, and you must embrace the opportunity." 20 

I made a slip in policy ; I appealed to the family affections, 
though I was speaking to a priest and a soldier, two classes 
of men circumstantially divorced from the kind and homely 
ties of life. 

"Your father and mother?" cried the priest. ''Very well; 25 
you will convert them in their turn when you go home." 

I think I see my father's face ! I would rather tackle the 
Gaetulian lion in his den than embark on such an enterprise 
against the family theologian. 

But now the hunt was up ; priest and soldier were in full cry 3c 
for my conversion ; and the Work of the Propagation of the 
Faith, for which the people of Cheylard subscribed forty-eight 
francs ten centimes during 1877, was being gallantly pursued 
against myself. It was an odd but most effective proselytizing. 



1 84 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

They never sought to convince me in argument, where I might 
have attempted some defense ; but took it for granted that I 
was both ashamed and terrified at my position, and urged me 
solely on the point of time. Now, they said, when God had 
5 led me to our Lady of the Snows, now was the appointed 

- hour. 

'■ Do not be withheld by false shame," observed the priest, 
for my encouragement. 

For one who feels very similarly to all sects of religion, and 

lo who has never been able, even for a moment, to weigh seri- 
ously the merit of this or that creed on the eternal side of things, 
however much he may see to praise or blame upon the secular 
and temporal side, the situation thus created was both unfair 
and painful. I committed my second fault in tact, and tried to 

1 5 plead that it was all the same thing in the end, and we were all 
drawing near by different sides to the same kind and undis- 
criminating Friend and Father. That, as it seems to lay spirits, 
would be the only gospel worthy of the name. But different 
men think differently ; and this revolutionary aspiration brought 

2o down the priest with all the terrors of the law. He launched 
into harrowing details of hell. The damned, he said — on the 
authority of a little book which he had read not a week before, 
and which, to add conviction to conviction, he had fully intended 
to bring along with him in his pocket — were to occupy the 

25 same attitude through all eternity in the midst of dismal tor- 
tures. And as he thus expatiated, he grew in nobility of aspect 
with his enthusiasm. 

As a result the pair concluded that I should seek out the 
Prior, since the Abbot was from home, and lay my case im- 

30 mediately before him. 

" Cest mo7i conseil comme aiicien militaire^^'' observed the 
Commandant ; 'V/ cehd de monsieiir comme p7'et7'ey 

^^Oiii'' added the cure, sententiously nodding; ^^ comme ati- 
cieii militaire — et coi7i7ne pretrey 



OUR LADY OF THE SNOWS 185 

At this moment, whilst I was somewhat embarrassed how to 
answer, in came one of the monks, a little brown fellow, as 
lively as a grig, and with an Italian accent, who threw himself 
at once into the contention, but in a milder and more persua- 
sive vein, as befitted one of these pleasant brethren. Look at 5 
him, he said. The rule was very hard ; he would have dearly 
liked to stay in his own country, Italy — it was well known how 
beautiful it was, the beautiful Italy; but then there were no 
Trappists in Italy ; and he had a soul to save ; and here he was. 

I am afraid I must be at bottom, what a cheerful Indian 10 
critic has dubbed me, " a faddling hedonist " ; for this descrip- 
tion of the brother's motives gave me somewhat of a shock. I 
should have preferred to think he had chosen the life for its 
own sake, and not for ulterior purposes ; and this shows how 
profoundly I was out of sympathy with these good Trappists, 15 
even when I was doing my best to sympathize. But to the cure 
the argument seemed decisive. 

" Hear that 1 " he cried. '' And I have seen a marquis here, 
a marquis, a marquis" — he repeated the holy word three 
times over — ^' and other persons high in society ; and gen- 20 
erals. And here, at your side, is this gentleman, who has 
been so many years in armies — decorated, an old warrior. 
And here he is, ready to dedicate himself to God." 

I was by this time so thoroughly embarrassed that I pleaded 
cold feet, and made my escape from the apartment. It was a 25 
furious windy morning, with a sky much cleared, and long and 
potent intervals of sunshine ; and I wandered until dinner in the 
wild country towards the east, sorely staggered and beaten upon 
by the gale, but rewarded with some striking views. 

At dinner the Work of the Propagation of the Faith was 30 
recommenced, and on this occasion still more distastefully to me. 
The priest asked me many questions as to the contemptible 
faith of my fathers, and received my replies with a kind of 
ecclesiastical titter. 



1 86 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

" Your sect," he said once ; " for I think you will admit it 
would be doing it too much honor to call it a religion." 

"As you please, monsieur," said I. ^'' La parole est a vous." 

At length I grew annoyed beyond endurance ; and although 

5 he was on his own ground, and, what is more to the purpose, 

an old man, and so holding a claim upon my toleration, I could 

not avoid a protest against this uncivil usage. He was sadly 

discountenanced. 

" I assure you," he said, " I have no inclination to laugh in 
lo my heart. I have no other feeling but interest in your soul." 

And there ended my conversion. Honest man ! He was no 
dangerous deceiver ; but a country parson, full of zeal and faith. 
Long may he tread Gevaudan with his kilted skirts — a man 
strong to walk and strong to comfort his parishioners in death ! 
15 I dare say he would beat bravely through a snowstorm where 
his duty called him ; and it is not always the most faithful 
believer who makes the cunningest apostle. 



UPPER GEVAUDAN (Continued) 
ACROSS THE GOULET 

The wind fell during dinner, and the sky remained clear ; so 
it was under better auspices that I loaded Modestine before the 
monastery gate. My Irish friend accompanied me so far on the 
way. As we came through the wood, there was Pere Apolli- 
naire hauling his barrow ; and he too quitted his labors to go 5 
with me for perhaps a hundred yards, holding my hand between 
both of his in front of him. I parted first from one and then 
from the other with unfeigned regret, but yet with the glee of 
the traveler who shakes off the dust of one stage before hurry- 
ing forth upon another. Then Modestine and I mounted the lo 
course of the Allier, which here led us back into Ge'vaudan 
towards its sources in the forest of Mercoire. It was but an 
inconsiderable burn before we left its guidance. Thence, over 
a hill, our way lay through a naked plateau, until we reached 
Chasserades at sundown. 15 

The company in the inn kitchen that night were all men em- 
ployed in survey for one of the projected railways. They were 
intelligent and conversable, and we decided the future of France 
over hot wine, until the state of the clock frightened us to rest. 
There were four beds in the little upstairs room ; and we slept 20 
six. But I had a bed to myself, and persuaded them to leave 
the window open. 

^^He, bourgeois ; il est cinq heures ! " was the cry that wakened 
me in the morning (Saturday, September 28th). The room was 
full of a transparent darkness, which dimly showed me the other 25 
three beds and the five different nightcaps on the pillows. But 
out of the window the dawn was growing ruddy in a long belt 

187 



1 88 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

over the hilltops, and day was about to flood the plateau. The 
hour was inspiriting; and there seemed a promise of calm 
weather, which was perfectly fulfilled. I was soon under way 
with Modestine. The road lay for a while over the plateau, and 
5 then descended through a precipitous village into the valley of 
the Chassezac. This stream ran among green meadows, well 
hidden from the world by its steep banks ; the broom was in 
flower, and here and there was a hamlet sending up its smoke. 
At last the path crossed the Chassezac upon a bridge, and, 

lo forsaking this deep hollow, set itself to cross the mountain of 
La Goulet. It wound up through Lestampes by upland fields 
and woods of beech and birch, and with every corner brought 
me into an acquaintance with some new interest. Even in the 
gully of the Chassezac my ear had been struck by a noise like 

1 5 that of a great bass bell ringing at the distance of many miles ; 
but this, as I continued to mount and draw nearer to it, seemed 
to change in character, and I found at length that it came from 
some one leading flocks afield to the note of a rural horn. The 
narrow street of Lestampes stood full of sheep, from wall to wall 

2o — black sheep and white, bleating like the birds in spring, and 
each one accompanying himself upon the sheep bell round his 
neck. It made a pathetic concert, all in treble. A little higher, 
and I passed a pair of men in a tree with pruning hooks, and one 
of them was singing the music of a bourree. Still further, and 

25 when I was already threading the birches, the crowing of cocks 
came cheerfully up to my ears, and along with that the voice of 
a flute discoursing a deliberate and plaintive air from one of 
the upland villages. I pictured to myself some grizzled, apple- 
cheeked, country schoolmaster fluting in his bit of a garden in 

30 the clear autumn sunshine. All these beautiful and interesting 
sounds filled my heart with an unwonted expectation ; and it 
appeared to me that, once past this range which I was mount- 
ing, I should descend into the garden of the world. Nor was 
I deceived, for I was now done with rains and winds and a 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 1 89 

bleak country. The first part of my journey ended here ; and 
this was like an induction of sweet sounds into the other and 
more beautiful. 

There are other degrees oifeyness, as of punishment, besides 
the capital ; and I was now led by my good spirits into an 5 
adventure which I relate in the interest of future donkey drivers. 
The road zigzagged so widely on the hillside that I chose a short 
cut by map and compass, and struck through the dwarf woods 
to catch the road again upon a higher level. It was my one 
serious conflict with Modestine. She would none of my short 10 
cut ; she turned in my face, she backed, she reared ; she, whom 
I had hitherto imagined to be dumb, actually brayed with a 
loud hoarse flourish, like a cock crowing for the dawn. I plied 
the goad with one hand ; with the other, so steep was the 
ascent, I had to hold on the packsaddle. Half a dozen times 15 
she was nearly over backwards on the top of me ; half a dozen 
times, from sheer weariness of spirit, I was nearly giving it up, 
and leading her down again to follow the road. But I took the 
thing as a wager, and fought it through. I was surprised, as I 
went on my way again, by what appeared to be chill raindrops 20 
falling on my hand, and more than once looked up in wonder 
at the cloudless sky. But it was only sweat which came dropping 
from my brow. 

Over the summit of the Goulet there was no marked road — 
only upright stones posted from space to space to guide the 25 
drovers. The turf underfoot was springy and well scented. I 
had no company but a lark or two, and met but one bullock 
cart between Lestampes and Bleymard. In front of me I saw 
a shallow valley, and beyond that the range of the Lozere, 
sparsely wooded and well enough modeled in the flanks, but 30 
straight and dull in outline. There was scarce a sign of culture ; 
only about Bleymard, the white highroad from Villefort to Mende 
traversed a range of meadows, set with spiry poplars, and 
sounding from side to side with the bells of flocks and herds. 



A NIGHT AMONG THE PINES 

From Bleymard after dinner, although it was already late, I 
set out to scale a portion of the Lozere. An ill-marked stony 
drove-road guided me forward ; and I met nearly half a dozen 
bullock carts descending from the woods, each laden with a 
5 whole pine tree for the winter's firing. At the top of the woods, 
which do not climb very high upon this cold ridge, I struck left- 
ward by a path among the pines, until I hit on a dell of green 
turf, where a streamlet made a little spout over some stones to 
serve me for a water tap. ''In a more sacred or sequestered 

lo bower — nor nymph nor faunus haunted." The trees were 
not old, but they grew thickly round the glade ; there was no 
outlook, except northeastward upon distant hilltops, or straight 
upward to the sky ; and the encampment felt secure and private 
like a room. By the time I had made my arrangements and fed 

1 5 Modestine, the day was already beginning to decline. I buckled 
myself to the knees into my sack and made a hearty meal ; and 
as soon as the sun went down, I pulled my cap over my eyes 
and fell asleep. 

Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof ; but in 

20 the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and 
perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face 
of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people 
choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living 
slumber to the man who sleeps afield. All night long he can 

25 hear Nature breathing deeply and freely ; even as she takes her 
rest she turns and smiles ; and there is one stirring hour un- 
known to those who dwell in houses, when a wakeful influence 
goes abroad over the sleeping hemisphere, and all the outdoor 
world are on their feet. It is then that the cock first crows, not 

30 this time to announce the dawn, but like a cheerful watchman 

190 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 191 

speeding the course of night. Cattle awake on the meadows ; 
sheep break their fast on dewy hillsides, and change to a new 
lair among the ferns ; and houseless men, who have lain down 
with the fowls, open their dim eyes and behold the beauty of 
the night. 5 

At what inaudible summons, at what gentle touch of Nature, 
are all these sleepers thus recalled in the same hour to life ? Do 
the stars rain down an influence, or do we share some thrill of 
mother earth below our resting bodies ? Even shepherds and 
old country folk, who are the deepest read in these arcana, have 10 
not a guess as to the means or purpose of this nightly resurrec- 
tion. Towards two in the morning they declare the thing takes 
place ; and neither know nor inquire further. And at least it is 
a pleasant incident. We are disturbed in our slumber only, like 
the luxurious Montaigne, ''that we may the better and more 15 
sensibly relish it." We have a moment to look upon the stars, 
and there is a special pleasure for some minds in the reflection 
that we share the impulse with all outdoor creatures in our 
neighborhood, that we have escaped out of the Bastille of 
civilization, and are become, for the time being, a mere kindly 20 
animal and a sheep of Nature's flock. 

When that hour came to me among the pines, I wakened 
thirsty. My tin was standing by me half full of water. I emp- 
tied it at a draft ; and feeling broad awake after this internal 
cold aspersion, sat upright to make a cigarette. The stars were 25 
clear, colored, and jewel-like, but not frosty. A faint silvery 
vapor stood for the Milky Way. All around me the black fir 
points stood upright and stock-still. By the whiteness of the pack- 
saddle, I could see Modestine walking round and round at the 
length of her tether ; I could hear her steadily munching at the 30 
sward ; but there was not another sound, save the indescribable 
quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking 
and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of space, 
from where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to where 



192 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be 
more like a peddler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see 
faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette ; and at 
each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became 
5 for a second the highest light in the landscape. 

A faint wind, more like a moving coolness than a stream of 
air, passed down the glade from time to time ; so that even in 
my great chamber the air was being renewed all night long. I 
thought with horror of the inn at Chasserades and the congre- 

10 gated nightcaps ; with horror of the nocturnal prowesses of clerks 
and students, of hot theaters and pass-keys and close rooms. I 
have not often enjoyed a more serene possession of myself, nor 
felt more independent of material aids. The outer world, from 
which we cower into our houses, seemed after all a gentle hab- 

1 5 itable place ; and night after night a man's bed, it seemed, was 
laid and waiting for him in the fields, where God keeps an open 
house. I thought I had rediscovered one of those truths which 
are revealed to savages and hid from political economists : at 
the least, I had discovered a new pleasure for myself. And yet 

2o even while I was exulting in my solitude I became aware of a 
strange lack. I wished a companion to lie near me in the star- 
light, silent and not moving, but ever within touch. For there 
is a fellowship more quiet even than solitude, and which, rightly 
understood, is solitude made perfect. And to live out of doors 

25 with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete 
and free. 

As I thus lay, between content and longing, a faint noise stole 
towards me through the pines. I thought, at first, it was the 
crowing of cocks or the barking of dogs at some very distant 

30 farm ; but steadily and gradually it took articulate shape in my 
ears, until I became aware that a passenger was going by upon 
the highroad in the valley, and singing loudly as he went. There 
was more of good will than grace in his performance ; but he 
trolled with ample lungs ; and the sound of his voice took hold 



UPPER GEVAUDAN 193 

upon the hillside and set the air shaking in the leafy glens. I 
have heard people passing by night in sleeping cities ; some of 
them sang ; one, I remember, played loudly on the bagpipes. 
I have heard the rattle of a cart or carriage spring up suddenly 
after hours of stillness, and pass, for some minutes, within the 5 
range of my hearing as I lay abed. There is a romance about 
all who are abroad in the black hours, and with something of a 
thrill we try to guess their business. But here the romance was 
double : first, this glad passenger, lit internally with wine, who 
sent up his voice in music through the night ; and then I, 10 
on the other hand, buckled into my sack, and smoking alone 
in the pine woods between four and five thousand feet towards 
the stars. 

When I awoke again (Sunday, 29th September), many of 
the stars had disappeared ; only the stronger companions of 1 5 
the night still burned visibly overhead ; and away towards the 
east I saw a faint haze of light upon the horizon, such as had 
been the Milky Way when I was last awake. Day was at 
hand. I lit my lantern, and by its glowworm light put on my 
boots and gaiters ; then I broke up some bread for Modes- 20 
tine, filled my can at the water tap, and lit my spirit lamp to boil 
myself some chocolate. The blue darkness lay long in the glade 
where I had so sweetly slumbered ; but soon there was a broad 
streak of orange melting into gold along the mountain tops of 
Vivarais. A solemn glee possessed my mind at this gradual 25 
and lovely coming in of day. I heard the runnel with delight ; I 
looked round me for something beautiful and unexpected ; but 
the still black pine trees, the hollow glade, the munching ass, 
remained unchanged in figure. Nothing had altered but the light, 
and that, indeed, shed over all a spirit of life and of breathing 30 
peace, and moved me to a strange exhilaration. 

I drank my water chocolate, which was hot if it was not rich, 
and strolled here and there, and up and down about the glade. 
While I was thus delaying, a gush of steady wind, as long as a 



194 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

heavy sigh, poured direct out of the quarter of the morning. It 
was cold, and set me sneezing. The trees near at hand tossed 
their black plumes in its passage ; and I could see the thin dis- 
tant spires of pine along the edge of the hill rock slightly to and 
5 fro against the golden east. Ten minutes after, the sunlight 
spread at a gallop along the hillside, scattering shadows and 
sparkles, and the day had come completely. 

I hastened to prepare my pack, and tackle the steep ascent 
that lay before me ; but I had something on my mind. It was 

10 only a fancy ; yet a fancy will sometimes be importunate. I had 
been most hospitably received and punctually served in my green 
caravanserai. The room was airy, the water excellent, and the 
dawn had called me to a moment. I say nothing of the tapes- 
tries or the inimitable ceiling, nor yet of the view which I com- 

1 5 manded from the windows ; but I felt I was in some one's debt 
for all this liberal entertainment. And so it pleased me, in a half- 
laughing way, to leave pieces of money on the turf as I went 
along, until I had left enough for my night's lodging. I trust 
they did not fall to some rich and churlish drover. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 
ACROSS THE LOZERE 

The track that I had followed in the evening soon died out, 
and I continued to follow over a bald turf ascent a row of 
stone pillars, such as had conducted me across the Goulet. It 
was already warm. I tied my jacket on the pack, and walked 
in my knitted waistcoat. Modestine herself was in high spirits, 5 
and broke of her own accord, for the first time in my experi- 
ence, into a jolting trot that sent the oats swashing in the 
pocket of my coat. The view, back upon the northern Gevau- 
dan, extended with every step ; scarce a tree, scarce a house, 
appeared upon the fields of wild hill that ran north, east, and 10 
west, all blue and gold in the haze and sunlight of the morning. 
A multitude of little birds kept sweeping and twittering about 
my path ; they perched on the stone pillars, they pecked and 
strutted on the turf, and I saw them circle in volleys in the blue 
air, and show, from time to time, translucent flickering wings 15 
between the sun and me. 

Almost from the first moment of my march, a faint large 
noise, like a distant surf, had filled my ears. Sometimes I was 
tempted to think it the voice of a neighboring waterfall, and 
sometimes a subjective result of the utter stillness of the hill. 20 
But as I continued to advance, the noise increased and became 
like the hissing of an enormous tea urn, and at the same time 
breaths of cool air began to reach me from the direction of the 
summit. At length I understood. It was blowing stiffly from 
the south upon the other slope of the Lozere, and every step 25 
that I took I was drawing nearer to the wind. 

Although it had been long desired, it was quite unexpectedly 

195 



196 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

at last that my eyes rose above the summit. A step that seemed 
no way more decisive than many other steps that had preceded 
it — and, '' like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on 
the Pacific," I took possession, in my own name, of a new 
5 quarter of the world. For behold, instead of the gross turf ram- 
part I had been mounting for so long, a view into the hazy air 
of heaven, and a land of intricate blue hills below my feet. 

The Lozere lies nearly east and west, cutting Ge'vaudan into 
two unequal parts; its highest point, this Pic de Finiels, on 

10 which I was then standing, rises upwards of five thousand six 
hundred feet above the sea, and in clear weather commands a 
view over all lower Languedoc to the Mediterranean Sea. I have 
spoken with people who either pretended or believed that they 
had seen, from the Pic de Finiels, white ships sailing by Mont- 

15 pellier and Cette. Behind was the upland northern country 
through which my way had lain, peopled by a dull race, without 
wood, without much grandeur of hill form, and famous in the 
past for little beside wolves. But in front of me, half veiled in 
sunny haze, lay a new Gevaudan, rich, picturesque, illustrious 

20 for stirring events. Speaking largely, I was in the Cevennes at 
Monastier, and during all my journey ; but there is a strict and 
local sense in which only this confused and shaggy country at 
my feet has any tide to the name, and in this sense the peasan- 
try employ the word. These are the Ce'vennes with an empha- 

25 sis: the Ce'vennes of the Cevennes. In that undecipherable 
labyrinth of hills, a war of bandits, a war of wild beasts, raged 
for two years between the Grand Monarch with all his troops 
and marshals on the one hand, and a few thousand Protestant 
mountaineers upon the other. A hundred and eighty years ago, 

30 the Camisards held a station even on the Lozere, where I stood ; 
they had an organization, arsenals, a military and religious hier- 
archy ; their affairs were " the discourse of every coffeehouse " 
in London ; England sent fleets in their support ; their leaders 
prophesied and murdered; with colors and drums, and the 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 197 

singing of old French psalms, their bands sometimes affronted 
daylight, marched before walled cities, and dispersed the generals 
of the king ; and sometimes at night, or in masquerade, pos- 
sessed themselves of strong castles, and avenged treachery upon 
their allies and cruelty upon their foes. There, a hundred and 5 
eighty years ago, was the chivalrous Roland, '' Count and Lord 
Roland, generalissimo of the Protestants in France," grave, 
silent, imperious, pock-marked ex-dragoon, whom a lady followed 
in his wanderings out of love. There was Cavalier, a baker's 
apprentice w4th a genius for war, elected brigadier of Camisards 10 
at seventeen, to die at fifty-five the English governor of Jersey. 
There again was Castanet, a partisan leader in a voluminous 
peruke and with a taste for controversial divinity. Strange 
generals, who moved apart to take counsel with the God of 
Hosts, and fled or offered battle, set sentinels or slept in an un- 15 
guarded camp, as the Spirit whispered to their hearts ! And 
there, to follow these and other leaders, w^as the rank and file 
of prophets and disciples, bold, patient, indefatigable, hardy to 
run upon the mountains, cheering their rough life with psalms, 
eager to fight, eager to pray, listening devoutly to the oracles 20 
of brainsick children, and mystically putting a grain of wheat 
among the pewter balls with which they charged their muskets. 
I had traveled hitherto through a dull district, and in the 
track of nothing more notable than the child-eating Beast of 
Gevaudan, the Napoleon Buonaparte of wolves. But now I 25 
was to go down into the scene of a romantic chapter — or, 
better, a romantic footnote — in the history of the world. 
What was left of all this bygone dust and heroism ? I was told 
that Protestantism still survived in this head seat of Protestant 
resistance ; so much the priest himself had told me in the mon- 30 
astery parlor. But I had yet to learn if it were a bare survival, 
or a lively and generous tradition. Again, if in the northern 
Cevennes the people are narrow in religious judgments, and 
more filled with zeal than charity, what was I to look for in this 



198 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

land of persecution and reprisal — in a land where the tyranny 
of the Church produced the Camisard rebellion, and the terror 
of the Camisards threw the Catholic peasantry into legalized 
revolt upon the other side, so that Camisard and Florentine 

5 skulked for each other's lives among the mountains ? 

Just on the brow of the hill, where I paused to look before 
me, the series of stone pillars came abruptly to an end ; and 
only a little below, a sort of track appeared and began to go 
down a breakneck slope, turning like a corkscrew as it went. 

10 It led into a valley between falling hills, stubbly with rocks like 
a reaped field of corn, and floored further down with green mead- 
ows. I followed the track with precipitation ; the steepness of 
the slope, the continual agile turning of the line of descent, and 
the old unwearied hope of finding something new in a new 

15 country, all conspired to lend me wings. Yet a little lower and 
a stream began, collecting itself together out of many fountains, 
and soon making a glad noise among the hills. Sometimes it 
would cross the track in a bit of waterfall, with a pool, in which 
Modestine refreshed her feet. 

20 The whole descent is like a dream to me, so rapidly was it 
accomplished. I had scarcely left the summit ere the valley had 
closed round my path, and the sun beat upon me, walking in a 
stagnant lowland atmosphere. The track became a road, and 
went up and down in easy undulations. I passed cabin after 

25 cabin, but all seemed deserted ; and I saw not a human crea- 
ture, nor heard any sound except that of the stream. I was, 
however, in a different country from the day before. The stony 
skeleton of the world was here vigorously displayed to sun and 
air. The slopes were steep and changeful. Oak trees clung 

30 along the hills, well grown, wealthy in leaf, and touched by 
the autumn with strong and luminous colors. Here and there 
another stream would fall in from the right or the left, down a 
gorge of snow-white and tumultuary bowlders. The river in the 
bottom (for it was rapidly growing a river, collecting on all 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 199 

hands as it trotted on its way) here foamed awhile in desperate 
rapids, and there lay in pools of the most enchanting sea-green 
shot with watery browns. As far- as I have gone, I have never 
seen a river of so changeful and delicate a hue ; crystal was not 
more clear, the meadows were not by half so green ; and at 5 
every pool I saw I felt a thrill of longing to be out of these hot, 
dusty, and material garments, and bathe my naked body in the 
mountain air and water. All the time as I went on I never for- 
got it was the Sabbath ; the stillness was a perpetual reminder ; 
and I heard in spirit the church bells clamoring all over Europe, 10 
and the psalms of a thousand churches. 

At length a human sound struck upon my ear — a cry 
strangely modulated between pathos and derision ; and looking 
across the valley, I saw a little urchin sitting in a meadow, with 
his hands about his knees, and dwarfed to almost comical small- 1 5 
ness by the distance. But the rogue had picked me out as I 
went down the road, from oak wood on to oak wood, driving 
Modestine ; and he made me the compliments of the new coun- 
try in this tremulous high-pitched salutation. And as all noises 
are lovely and natural at a sufficient distance, this also, coming 20 
through so much clean hill air and crossing all the green valley, 
sounded pleasant to my ear, and seemed a thing rustic, like the 
oaks or the river. 

A little after, the stream that I was following fell into the 
Tarn, at Pont de Montvert of bloody memory. 25 



PONT DE MONTVERT 

One of the first things I encountered in Pont de Montvert 
was, if I remember rightly, the Protestant temple ; but this was 
but the type of other novelties. A subtle atmosphere distin- 
guishes a town in England from a town in France, or even in 
5 Scotland. At Carlisle you can see you are in one country ; at 
Dumfries, thirty miles away, you are as sure that you are in the 
other. I should find it difficult to tell in what particulars Pont 
de Montvert differed from Monastier or Langogne, or even 
Bleymard ; but the difference existed, and spoke eloquently to 

lo the eyes. The place, with its houses, its lanes, its glaring river 
bed, wore an indescribable air of the South. 

All was Sunday bustle in the streets and in the public house, 
as all had been Sabbath peace among the mountains. There 
must have been near a score of us at dinner by eleven before 

1 5 noon ; and after I had eaten and drunken, and sat writing up 
my journal, I suppose as many more came dropping in one after 
another, or by twos and threes. In crossing the Lozere I had 
not only come among new natural features, but moved into the 
territory of a different race. These people, as they hurriedly dis- 

20 patched their viands in an intricate swordplay of knives, ques- 
tioned and answered me with a degree of intelligence which 
excelled all that I had met, except among the railway folk at 
Chasserades. They had open telling faces, and were lively both 
in speech and manner. They not only entered thoroughly into 

25 the spirit of my little trip, but more than one declared, if he 
were rich enough, he would like to set forth on such another. 

Even physically there was a pleasant change. I had not seen 
a pretty woman since I left Monastier, and there but one. Now 
of the three who sat down with me to dinner, one was certainly 

30 not beautiful — a poor timid thing of forty, quite troubled at this 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 20I 

roaring table d'hote, whom I squired and helped to wine, and 
pledged and tried generally to encourage, with quite a contrary 
effect ; but the other two, both married, were both more hand- 
some than the average of women. And Clarisse ? What shall I 
say of Clarisse ? She waited the table with a heavy placable 5 
nonchalance, like a performing cow ; her great gray eyes were 
steeped in amorous languor ; her features, although fleshy, were 
of an original and accurate design ; her mouth had a curl ; her 
nostril spoke of dainty pride ; her cheek fell into strange and 
interesting lines. It was a face capable of strong emotion, and, lo 
with training, it offered the promise of delicate sentiment. It 
seemed pitiful to see so good a model left to country admirers 
and a country way of thought. Beauty should at least have 
touched society, then, in a moment, it throws off a weight that 
lay upon it, it becomes conscious of itself, it puts on an elegance, 1 5 
learns a gait and a carriage of the head, and, in a moment, /^7/<?/ 
dea. Before I left I assured Clarisse of my hearty admiration. 
She took it like milk, without embarrassment or wonder, merely 
looking at me steadily with h'er great eyes ; and I own the re- 
sult upon myself was some confusion. If Clarisse could read 20 
English, I should not dare to add that her figure was unworthy 
of her face. Hers was a case for stays ; but that may perhaps 
grow better as she gets up in years. 

Pont de Montvert, or Greenhill Bridge, as we might say at 
home, is a place memorable in the story of the Camisards. It 25 
was here that the war broke out ; here that those southern Cov- 
enanters slew their Archbishop Sharpe. The persecution on the 
one hand, the febrile enthusiasm on the other, are almost equally 
difficult to understand in these quiet modern days, and with our 
easy modem beliefs and disbeliefs. The Protestants were one 30 
and all beside their right minds with zeal and sorrow. They 
were all prophets and prophetesses. Children at the breast 
would exhort their parents to good works. "A child of fifteen 
months at Quissac spoke from its mother's arms, agitated and 



202 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

sobbing, distinctly and with a loud voice." Marshal Villars has 
seen a town where all the women " seemed possessed by the 
devil," and had trembling fits, and uttered prophecies publicly 
upon the streets. A prophetess of Vivarais was hanged at Mont- 
5 pellier because blood flowed from her eyes and nose, and she 
declared that she was weeping tears of blood for the misfortunes 
of the Protestants, And it was not only women and children. 
Stalwart dangerous fellows, used to swing the sickle or to wield 
the forest ax, were likewise shaken with strange paroxysms, and 

lo spoke oracles with sobs and streaming tears. A persecution un- 
surpassed in violence had lasted near a score of years, and this 
was the result upon the persecuted ; hanging, burning, breaking 
on the wheel, had been vain ; the dragoons had left their hoof 
marks over all the countryside ; there were men rowing in the 

1 5 galleys, and women pining in the prisons of the Church ; and 
not a thought was changed in the heart of any upright Protestant. 
Now the head and forefront of the persecution — after La- 
moignon de Bavile — Frangois de Langlade du Chayla (pro- 
nounced Cheila), Archpriest of the Cevennes and Inspector of 

2o Missions in the same country, had a house in which he some- 
times dwelt in the town of Pont de Montvert. He was a consci- 
entious person, who seems to have been intended by nature for 
a pirate, and now fifty-five, an age by which a man has learned 
all the moderation of which he is capable. A missionary in his 

25 youth in China, he there suffered martyrdom, was left for dead, 
and only succored and brought -back to life by the charity of a 
■pariah. We must suppose the pariah devoid of second sight, 
and not purposely malicious in this act. Such an experience, it 
might be thought, would have cured a man of the desire to perse- 

30 cute ; but the human spirit is a thing strangely put together ; 
and, having been a Christian martyr, Du Chayla became a 
Christian persecutor. The Work of the Propagation of the 
Faith went roundly forward in his hands. His house in Pont de 
Montvert served him as a prison. There he plucked out the 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 203 

hairs of the beard, and closed the hands of his prisoners upon 
live coals, to convince them that they were deceived in their 
opinions. And yet had not he himself tried and proved the 
inefficacy of these carnal arguments among the Buddhists in 
China ? 5 

Not only was life made intolerable in Languedoc, but flight 
was rigidly forbidden. One Massip, a muleteer, and well ac- 
quainted with the mountain paths, had already guided several 
troops of fugitives in safety to Geneva ; and on him, with an- 
other convoy, consisting mostly of women dressed as men, Du 10 
Chayla, in an evil hour for himself, laid his hands. The Sunday 
following, there was a conventicle of Protestants in the woods 
of Altefage upon Mont Bouges ; where there stood up one 
Seguier — Spirit Seguier, as his companions called him — a 
wool carder, tall, black-faced, and toothless, but a man full of 15 
prophecy. He declared, in the name of God, that the time for 
submission had gone by, and they must betake themselves to 
arms for the deliverance of their brethren and the destruction 
of the priests. 

The next night, 24th July, 1702, a sound disturbed the 20 
Inspector of Missions as he sat in his prison house at Pont de 
Montvert ; the voices of many men upraised in psalmody drew 
nearer and nearer through the town. It was ten at night ; he 
had his court about him, priests, soldiers, and servants, to the 
number of twelve or fifteen ; and now dreading the insolence of 25 
a conventicle below his very windows, he ordered forth his sol- 
diers to report. But the psalm singers were already at his door, 
fifty strong, led by the inspired Seguier, and breathing death. 
To their summons, the archpriest made answer like a stout old 
persecutor, and bade his garrison fire upon the mob. One Cam- 30 
isard (for, according to some, it was in this night's work that 
they came by the name) fell at this discharge ; his comrades 
burst in the door with hatchets and a beam of wood, overran 
the lower story of the house, set free the prisoners, and finding 



204 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

one of them in the vine^ a sort of Scavenger's Daughter of the 
place and period, redoubled in fury against Du Chayla, and 
sought by repeated assaults to carry the upper floors. But he, 
on his side, had given absolution to his men, and they bravely 
5 held the staircase. 

" Children of God," cried the prophet, " hold your hands. 
Let us burn the house, with the priest and the satellites of 
Baal." 

The fire caught readily. Out of an upper window Du Chayla 

lo and his men lowered themselves into the garden by means of 
knotted sheets ; some escaped across the river under the bullets 
of the insurgents ; but the archpriest himself fell, broke his 
thigh, and could only crawl into the hedge. What were his 
reflections as this second martyrdom drew near? A poor, 

15 brave, besotted, hateful man, who had done his duty resolutely 
according to his light both in the Cevennes and China. He 
found at least one telling word to say in his defense ; for when 
the roof fell in and the upbursting flames discovered his retreat, 
and they came and dragged him to the public place of the town, 

20 raging and calling him damned — "If I be damned," said he, 
" why should you also damn yourselves "i " 

Here was a good reason for the last ; but in the course of his 
inspectorship he had given many stronger which all told in a 
contrary direction ; and these he was now to hear. One by one, 

25 Seguier first, the Camisards drew near and stabbed him. "This," 
they said, " is for my father broken on the wheel. This for my 
brother in the galleys. That for my mother or my sister im- 
prisoned in your cursed convents." Each gave his blow and His 
reason ; and then all kneeled and sang psalms around the body 

30 till the dawn. With the dawn, still singing, they defiled away 

towards Frugeres, further up the Tarn, to pursue the work of 

vengeance, leaving Du Chayla's prison house in ruins, and his 

body pierced with two-and-fifty wounds upon the public place. 

'T is a wild night's work, with its accompaniment of psalms ; 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 205 

and it seems as if a psalm must always have a sound of threaten- 
ing in that town upon the Tarn. But the story does not end, 
even so far as concerns Pont de Montvert, with the departure 
of the Camisards. The career of Seguier was brief and bloody. 
Two more priests and a whole family at Ladeveze, from the 
father to the servants, fell by his hand or by his orders ; and 
yet he was but a day or two at large, and restrained all the time 
by the presence of the soldiery. Taken at length by a famous 
soldier of fortune, Captain Foul, he appeared unmoved before 
his judges. 

" Your name ? " they asked. 

" Pierre Se'guier." 

" Why are you called Spirit .'' " 

" Because the Spirit of the Lord is with me." 

" Your domicile ? " 

'' Lately in the desert, and soon in heaven." 

" Have you no remorse for your crimes ? " 

" I have committed none. My soul is like a garden full of 
shelter and of fountains.'" 

At Pont de Montvert, on the 12th of August, he had his 
right hand stricken from his body, and was burned alive. And 
his soul was like a garden ? So perhaps was the soul of Du 
Chayla, the Christian martyr. And perhaps if you could read 
in my soul, or I could read in yours, our own composure might 
seem little less surprising. 

Du Chayla's house still stands, with a new roof, beside one 
of the bridges of the town ; and if you are curious you may see 
the terrace garden into which he dropped. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE TARN 

A new road leads from Pont de Montvert to Florae by the 
valley of the Tarn ; a smooth sandy ledge, it runs about half- 
way between the summit of the cliffs and the river in the 
bottom of the valley ; and I went in and out, as I followed it, 
5 from bays of shadow into promontories of afternoon sun. This 
was a pass like that of Killiecrankie ; a deep turning gully in 
the hills, with the Tarn making a wonderful hoarse uproar far 
below, and craggy summits standing in the sunshine high above. 
A thin fringe of ash trees ran about the hilltops, like ivy on a 

lo ruin ; but on the lower slopes and far up every glen the Span- 
ish chestnut trees stood each foursquare to heaven under its 
tented foliage. Some were planted each on its own terrace, no 
larger than a bed ; some, trusting in their roots, found strength 
to grow and prosper and be straight and large upon the rapid 

1 5 slopes of the valley ; others, where there was a margin to the 
river, stood marshaled in a line and mighty like cedars of Leb- 
anon. Yet even where they grew most thickly they were not to 
be thought of as a wood, but as a herd of stalwart individuals ; 
and the dome of each tree stood forth separate and large, and 

20 as it were a little hill, from among the domes of its companions. 
They gave forth a faint sweet perfume which pervaded the air 
of the afternoon ; autumn had put tints of gold and tarnish in 
the green ; and the sun so shone through and kindled the broad 
foliage, that each chestnut was relieved against another, not 

25 in shadow, but in light. A humble sketcher here laid down his 
pencil in despair. 

I wish I could convey a notion of the growth of these noble 
trees ; of how they strike out boughs like the oak, and trail 
sprays of drooping foliage like the willow ; of how they stand 

30 on upright fluted columns like the pillars of a church ; or like 

206 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 207 

the olive, from the most shattered bole can put out smooth and 
youthful shoots, and begin a new life upon the ruins of the old. 
Thus they partake of the nature of many different trees ; and 
even their prickly topknots, seen near at hand against the sky, 
have a certain palmlike air that impresses the imagination. But 5 
their individuality, although compounded of so many elements, is 
but the richer and the more original. And to look down upon 
a level filled with these knolls of foliage, or to see a clan of old 
unconquerable chestnuts cluster '' like herded elephants " upon 
the spur of a mountain, is to rise to higher thoughts of the 10 
powers that are in Nature. 

Between Modestine's laggard humor and the beauty of the 
scene, we made little progress all that afternoon ; and at last 
finding the sun, although still far from setting, was already 
beginning to desert the narrow valley of the Tarn, I began to 15 
cast about for a place to camp in. This was not easy to find ; 
the terraces were too narrow, and the ground, where it was 
unterraced, was usually too steep for a man to lie upon. I 
should have slipped all night, and awakened towards morning 
with my feet or my head in the river. 20 

After perhaps a mile, I saw, some sixty feet above the road, 
a little plateau large enough to hold my sack, and securely para- 
peted by the trunk of an aged and enormous chestnut. Thither, 
with infinite trouble, I goaded and kicked the reluctant Modes- 
tine, and there I hastened to unload her. There was only room 25 
for myself upon the plateau, and I had to go nearly as high 
again before I found so much as standjng room for the ass. It 
was on a heap of rolling stones, on an artificial terrace, certainly 
not five feet square in all. Here I tied her to a chestnut, and 
having given her corn and bread and made a pile of chestnut 30 
leaves, of which I found her greedy, I descended once more to 
my own encampment. 

The position was unpleasantly exposed. One or two carts went 
by upon the road ; and as long as daylight lasted I concealed 



208 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

myself, for all the world like a hunted Camisard, behind my 
fortification of vast chestnut trunk ; for I was passionately 
afraid of discovery and the visit of jocular persons in the 
night. Moreover, I saw that I must be early awake ; for these 
5 chestnut gardens had been the scene of industry no farther gone 
than on the day before. The slope was strewn with lopped 
branches, and here and there a great package of leaves was 
propped against a trunk ; for even the leaves are serviceable, 
and the peasants use them in winter by way of fodder for their 

lo animals. I picked a meal in fear and trembling, half lying down 
to hide myself from the road ; and I dare say I was as much 
concerned as if I had been a scout from Joani's band above 
upon the Lozere or from Salomon's across the Tarn in the old 
times of psalm singing and blood. Or, indeed, perhaps more ; 

1 5 for the Camisards had a remarkable confidence in God ; and a 
tale comes back into my memory of how the Count of Ge'vau- 
dan, riding with a party of dragoons and a notary at his saddle- 
bow to enforce the oath of fidelity in all the country hamlets, 
entered a valley in the woods, and found Cavalier and his men 

20 at dinner, gayly seated on the grass, and their hats crowned with 
box-tree garlands, while fifteen women washed their linen in 
the stream. Such was a field festival in 1703; at that date 
Antony Watteau would be painting similar subjects. 

This was a very different camp from that of the night before 

25 in the cool and silent pine woods. It was warm and even sti- 
fling in the valley. The shrill song of frogs, like the tremolo note 
of a whistle with a pea m it, rang up from the riverside before 
the sun was down. In the growing dusk, faint rustlings began 
to run to and fro among the fallen leaves ; from time to time a 

30 faint chirping or cheeping noise would fall upon my ear ; and 
from time to time I thought I could see the movement of some- 
thing swift and indistinct between the chestnuts. A profusion 
of large ants swarmed upon the ground ; bats whisked by, 
and mosquitoes droned overhead. The long boughs with their 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 209 

bunches of leaves hung against the sky like garlands ; and those 
immediately above and around me had somewhat the air of a 
trellis which should have been wrecked and half overthrown 
in a gale of wind. 

Sleep for a long time fled my eyelids ; and just as I was be- 5 
ginning to feel quiet stealing over my limbs, and settling densely 
on my mind, a noise at my head starded me broad awake again, 
and, I will frankly confess it, brought my heart into my mouth. 
It was such a noise as a person would make scratching loudly 
with a finger nail, it came from under the knapsack which 10 
served me for a pillow, and it was thrice repeated before I had 
time to sit up and turn about. Nothing was to be seen, nothing 
more was to be heard, but a few of these mysterious rustlings 
far and near, and the ceaseless accompaniment of the river and 
the frogs. I learned next day that the chestnut gardens are in- 15 
fested by rats ; rustling, chirping, and scraping were probably 
all due to these ; but the puzzle, for the moment, was insoluble, 
and I had to compose myself for sleep, as best I could, in 
wondering uncertainty about my neighbors. 

I was wakened in the gray of the morning (Monday, 30th 20 
September) by the sound of footsteps not far off upon the 
stones, and opening my eyes, I beheld a peasant going by among 
the chestnuts by a footpath that I had not hitherto observed. 
He turned his head neither to the right nor to the left, and 
disappeared in a few strides among the foliage. Here was an 25 
escape ! But it was plainly more than time to be moving. The 
peasantry were abroad ; scarce less terrible to me in my nonde- 
script position than the soldiers of Captain Poul to an undaunted 
Camisard. I fed Modestine with what haste I could ; but as I 
was returning to my sack, I saw a man and a boy come down 30 
the hillside in a direction crossing mine. They unintelligibly 
hailed me, and I replied with inarticulate but cheerful sounds, 
and hurried forward to get into my gaiters. 

The pair, who seemed to be father and son, came slowly up 



2IO TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

to the plateau, and stood close beside me for some time in 
silence. The bed was open, and I saw with regret my revolver 
lying patently disclosed on the blue wool. At last, after they 
had looked me all over, and silence had grown laughingly 
5 embarrassing, the man demanded in what seemed unfriendly 
tones : 

'' You have slept here ? " 

" Yes," said I. '' As you see." 

'' Why ? " he asked, 
lo " My faith," I answered lightly, " I was tired." 

He next inquired where I was going and what I had had for 
dinner ; and then, without the least transition, '' C'est bie?i,'' he 
added. " Come along." And he and his son, without another 
word, turned off to the next chestnut tree but one, which they 
15 set to pruning. The thing had passed off more simply than I 
hoped. He was a grave, respectable man ; and his unfriendly 
voice did not imply that he thought he was speaking to a crimi- 
nal, but merely to an inferior. 

I was soon on the road, nibbling a cake of chocolate and 
20 seriously occupied with a case of conscience. Was I to pay for 
my night's lodging .? I had slept ill, the bed was full of fleas in 
the shape of ants, there was no water in the room, the very 
dawn had neglected to call me in the morning. I might have 
missed a train, had there been any in the neighborhood to catch. 
25 Clearly, I was dissatisfied with my entertainment ; and I decided 
I should not pay unless I met a beggar. 

The valley looked even lovelier by morning; and soon the 
road descended to the level of the river. Here, in a place where 
many straight and prosperous chestnuts stood together, making 
30 an aisle upon a swarded terrace, I made my morning toilet in the 
water of the Tarn. It was marvelously clear, thrillingly cool; 
the soapsuds disappeared as if by magic in the swift current, 
and the white bowlders gave one a model for cleanliness. To 
wash in one of God's rivers in the open air seems to me a sort 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 211 

of cheerful solemnity or semipagan act of worship. To dabble 
among dishes in a bedroom may perhaps make clean the body ; 
but the imagination takes no share in such a cleansing. I went 
on with a light and peaceful heart, and sang psalms to the 
spiritual ear as I advanced. 5 

Suddenly up came an old woman, who point-blank demanded 
alms. 

'' Good ! " thought I ; '' here comes the waiter with the bill." 

And I paid for my night's lodging on the spot. Take it how 
you please, but this was the first and the last beggar that I met lo 
with during all my tour. 

A step or two farther I was overtaken by an old man in a 
brown nightcap, clear-eyed, weather-beaten, with a faint, excited 
smile. A little girl followed him, driving two sheep and a goat ; 
but she kept in our w^ake, while the old man walked beside me 1 5 
and talked about the morning and the valley. It was not much 
past six ; and for healthy people who have slept enough, that is 
an hour of expansion and of open and trustful talk. 

''"' Cojinaissez-vous h Seigneur? " he said at length. 

I asked him what Seigneur he meant ; but he only repeated 20 
the question with more emphasis and a look in his eyes denot- 
ing hope and interest. 

"Ah ! " said I, pointing upwards, '^ I understand you now. 
Yes, I know Him ; He is the best of acquaintances." 

The old man said he was delighted. " Hold," he added, strik- 25 
ing his bosom ; "it makes me happy here." There were a few 
who knew the Lord in these valleys, he went on to tell me ; not 
many, but a few. " Many are called," he quoted, " and few 
chosen." 

" My father," said I, " it is not easy to say who know the 30 
Lord ; and it is none of our business. Protestants and Catholics, 
and even those who worship stones, may know Him and be 
known by Him ; for He has made all." 

I did not know I was so good a preacher. 



212 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

The old man assured me he thought as I did, and repeated 
his expressions of pleasure at meeting me. " We are so few," 
he said. '^ They call us Moravians here ; but down in the de- 
partment of Gard, where there are also a good number, they 
5 are called Derbists, after an English pastor." 

I began to understand that I was figuring, in questionable 
taste, as a member of some sect to me unknown ; but I was 
more pleased with the pleasure of my companion than embar- 
rassed by my own equivocal position. Indeed I can see no 

lo dishonesty in not avowing a difference ; and especially in these 
high matters, where we have all a sufficient assurance that, 
whoever may be in the wrong, we ourselves are not completely 
in the right. The truth is much talked about ; but this old man 
in a brown nightcap showed himself so simple, sweet, and 

15 friendly that I am not unwilling to profess myself his convert. 
He was, as a matter of fact, a Plymouth Brother. Of what that 
involves in the way of doctrine I have no idea nor the time to 
inform myself ; but I know right well that we are all embarked 
upon a troublesome world, the children of one Father, striving 

20 in many essential points to do and to become the same. And 
although it was somewhat in a mistake that he shook hands 
with me so often and showed himself so ready to receive my 
words, that was a mistake of the truth-finding sort. For char- 
ity begins blindfold ; and only through a series of similar mis- 

25 apprehensions rises at length into a settled principle of love and 
patience, and a firm belief in all our fellow men. If I deceived 
this good old man, in the like manner I would willingly go on 
to deceive others. And if ever at length, out of our separate 
and sad ways, we should all come together into one common 

30 house, I have a hope, to which I cling dearly, that my mountain 
Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake hands with me again. 

Thus, talking like Christian and Faithful by the way, he and 
I came down upon a hamlet by the Tarn. It was but a humble 
place, called La Vernede, with less than a dozen houses, and a 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 21 3 

Protestant chapel on a knoll. Here he dwelt ; and here, at the 
inn, I ordered my breakfast. The inn was kept by an agreeable 
young man, a stone breaker on the road, and his sister, a pretty 
and engaging girl. The village schoolmaster dropped in to 
speak with the stranger. And these were all Protestants — a 5 
fact which pleased me more than I should have expected ; and, 
what pleased me still more, they seemed all upright and simple 
people. The Plymouth Brother hung round me with a sort of 
yearning interest, and returned at least thrice to make sure I 
was enjoying my meal. His behavior touched me deeply at the 10 
time, and even now moves me in recollection. He feared to 
intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my 
society ; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand. 

When all the rest had drifted off to their day's work, I sat 
for near half an hour with the young mistress of the house, who 1 5 
talked pleasantly over her seam of the chestnut harvest, and the 
beauties of the Tarn, and old family affections, broken up when 
young folk go from home, yet still subsisting. Hers, I am sure, 
was a sweet nature, with a country plainness and much delicacy 
underneath ; and he who takes her to his heart will doubtless 20 
be a fortunate young man. 

The valley below La Vernede pleased me more and more as 
I went forward. Now the hills approached from either hand, 
naked and crumbling, and walled in the river between cliffs ; 
and now the valley widened and became green. The road led 25 
me past the old castle of Miral on a steep ; past a battlemented 
monastery, long since broken up and turned into a church and 
parsonage ; and past a cluster of black roofs, the village of 
Cocures, sitting among vineyards and meadows and orchards 
thick with red apples, and where, along the highway, they were 30 
knocking down walnuts from the roadside trees, and gathering 
them in sacks and baskets. The hills, however much the vale 
might open, were still tall and bare, with cMy battlements and 
here and there a pointed summit ; and the Tarn still rattled 



214 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

through the stones with a mountain noise. I had been led, by 
bagmen of a picturesque turn of mind, to expect a horrific 
country after the heart of Byron ; but to my Scotch eyes it 
seemed smiling and plentiful, as the weather still gave an 
5 impression of high summer to my Scotch body ; although 
the chestnuts were already picked out by the autumn, and 
the poplars, that here began to mingle with them, had turned 
into pale gold against the approach of winter. 

There was something in this landscape, smiling although wild, 

lo that explained to me the spirit of the Southern Covenanters. 
Those who took to the hills for conscience' sake in Scotland had 
all gloomy and bedeviled thoughts ; for once that they received 
God's comfort they would be twice engaged with Satan ; but 
the Camisards had only bright and supporting visions. They 

1 5 dealt much more in blood, both given and taken ; yet I find no 
obsession of the Evil One in their records. With a light con- 
science, they pursued their life in these rough times and cir- 
cumstances. The soul of Se'guier, let us not forget, was like a 
garden. They knew they were on God's side, with a knowledge 

20 that has no parallel among the Scots ; for the Scots, although 
they might be certain of the cause, could never rest confident 
of the person. 

" We flew," says one old Camisard, '^ when we heard the 
sound of psalm singing, we flew as if with wings. We felt 

25 within us an animating ardor, a transporting desire. The feel- 
ing cannot be expressed in words. It is a thing that must have 
been experienced to be understood. However weary we might 
be, we thought no more of our weariness and grew light, so 
soon as the psalms fell upon our ears." 

30 The valley of the Tarn and the people whom I met at La 
Vernede not only explain to me this passage, but the twenty 
years of suffering which those, who were so stiff and so bloody 
when once they betook themselves to war, endured with the 
meekness of children and the constancy of saints and peasants. 



FLORAC 

On a branch of the Tarn stands Florae, the seat of a sub- 
prefecture, with an old castle, an alley of planes, many quaint 
street corners, and a live fountain welling from the hill. It is 
notable, besides, for handsome women, and as one of the two 
capitals, Alais being the other, of the country of the Camisards. 5 

The landlord of the inn took me, after I had eaten, to an 
adjoining cafe, where I, or rather my journey, became the topic 
of the afternoon. Every one had some suggestion for my guid- 
ance ; and the subprefectorial map was fetched from the sub- 
prefecture itself, and much thumbed among coffee cups and lo 
glasses of liqueur. Most of these kind advisers were Protestant, 
though I obsen'cd that Protestant and Catholic intermingled in 
a ver)' easy manner ; and it surprised me to see what a lively 
memory still subsisted of the religious war. Among the hills of 
the southwest, by Mauchline, Cumnock, or Carsphairn, in iso- 15 
lated farms or in the manse, serious Presbyterian people still 
recall the days of the great persecution, and the graves of local 
martyrs are still piously regarded. But in towns and among the 
so-called better classes, I fear that these old doings have become 
an idle tale. If you met a mixed company in the King's Arms 20 
at Wigtown, it is not likely that the talk would run on Covenant- 
ers. Nay, at Muirlcirk of Glenluce, I found the beadle's wife had 
not so much as heard of Prophet Peden. But these Ce'venols 
were proud of their ancestors in quite another sense ; the war 
was their chosen topic ; its exploits were their own patent of 25 
nobility ; and where a man or a race has had but one adventure, 
and that heroic, we must expect and pardon some prolixity of 
reference. They told me the country was still full of legends 
hitherto uncollected ; I heard from them about Cavalier's de- 
scendants — not direct descendants, be it understood, but only 30 

215 



2l6 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

cousins or nephews — who were still prosperous people in the 
scene of the boy general's exploits ; and one farmer had seen 
the bones of old combatants dug up into the air of an afternoon 
in the nineteenth century, in a field where the ancestors had 
5 fought, and the great-grandchildren were peaceably ditching. 
Later in the day one of the Protestant pastors was so good 
as to visit me : a young man, intelligent and polite, with whom 
I passed an hour or two in talk. Florae, he told me, is part 
Protestant, part Catholic ; and the difference in religion is 

lo usually doubled by the difference in politics. You may judge of 
my surprise, coming as I did from such a babbling purgatorial 
Poland of a place as Monastier, when I learned that the popu- 
lation lived together on very quiet terms ; and there was even 
an exchange of hospitalities between households thus doubly 

15 separated. Black Camisard and White Camisard, militiaman 
and Miquelet and dragoon, Protestant prophet and Catholic 
cadet of the White Cross, they had all been sabering and shoot- 
ing, burning, pillaging and murdering, their hearts hot with 
indignant passion ; and here, after a hundred and seventy years, 

20 Protestant is still Protestant, Catholic still Catholic, in mutual 
toleration and mild amity of life. But the race of man, like that 
indomitable nature whence it sprang, has medicating virtues of 
its own ; the years and seasons bring various harvests ; the sun 
returns after the rain ; and mankind outlives secular animosities, 

25 as a single man awakens from the passions of a day. We judge 
our ancestors from a more divine position ; and the dust being 
a little laid with several centuries, w^e can see both sides adorned 
with human virtues and fighting with a show of right. 

I have never thought it easy to be just, and find it daily even 

30 harder than I thought. I own I met these Protestants with de- 

' light and a sense of coming home. I was accustomed to speak 
their language, in another and deeper sense of the word than 
that which distinguishes between French and English ; for the 
true babel is a divergence upon morals. And hence I could hold 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 2 1/ 

more free communication with the Protestants, and judge them 
more justly, than the Catholics. Father Apollinaris may pair off 
with my mountain Plymouth Brother as two guileless and de- 
vout old men ; yet I ask myself if I had as ready a feeling for 
the virtues of the Trappist ; or had I been a Catholic, if I should 5 
have felt so warmly to the dissenter of La Vernede. With the 
first I was on terms of mere forbearance ; but with the other, 
although only on a misunderstanding and by keeping on selected 
points, it was still possible to hold converse and exchange some 
honest thoughts. In this world of imperfection we gladly wel- lo 
come even partial intimacies. If we find but one to whom we 
can speak out of our heart freely, with whom we can walk in 
love and simplicity without dissimulation, we have no ground of 
quarrel with the world or God. 



IN THE VALLEY OF THE MIMENTE 

On Tuesday, i st October, we left Florae late in the afternoon, 
a tired donkey and tired donkey driver. A little way up the 
Tarnon, a covered bridge of wood introduced us into .the val- 
ley of the Mimente. Steep rocky red mountains overhung the 
5 stream ; great oaks and chestnuts grew upon the slopes or in 
stony terraces ; here and there was a red field of millet or a 
few apple trees studded with red apples ; and the road passed 
hard by two black hamlets, one with an old castle atop to please 
the heart of the tourist. 

lo It was difficult here again to find a spot fit for my encamp- 
ment. Even under the oaks and chestnuts the ground had not 
only a very rapid slope, but was heaped with loose stones ; and 
where there was no timber the hills descended to the stream in 
a red precipice tufted with heather. The sun had left the high- 

15 est peak in front of me, and the valley was full of the lowing 
sound of herdsmen's horns as they recalled the flocks into the 
stable, when I spied a bight of meadow some way below the 
roadway in an angle of the river. Thither I descended, and, 
tying Modestine provisionally to a tree, proceeded to investigate 

20 the neighborhood. A gray pearly evening shadow filled the glen ; 
objects at a little distance grew indistinct and melted bafflingly 
into each other; and the darkness was rising steadily like an 
exhalation. I approached a great oak which grew in the meadow, 
hard by the river's brink ; when to my disgust the voices of chil- 

25 dren fell upon my ear, and I beheld a house round the angle on 
the other bank. I had half a mind to pack and be gone again, 
but the growing darkness moved me to remain. I had only to 
make no noise until the night was fairly come, and trust to the 
dawn to call me early in the morning. But it was hard to be 

30 annoyed by neighbors in such a great hotel. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 219 

A hollow underneath the oak was my bed. Before I had fed 
Modestine and arranged my sack, three stars were already 
brightly shining, and the others were beginning dimly to appear. 
I slipped down to the river, which looked very black among its 
rocks, to fill my can ; and dined with a good appetite in the 5 
dark, for I scrupled to light a lantern while so near a house. 
The moon, which I had seen, a pallid crescent, all afternoon, 
faintly illuminated the summit of the hills, but not a ray fell 
into the bottom of the glen w^here I was lying. -The oak rose 
before me like a pillar of darkness ; and overhead the heartsome 10 
stars were set in the face of the night. No one knows the stars 
who has not slept, as the French happily put it, a la belle etoile. 
He may know all their names and distances and magnitudes, 
and yet be ignorant of what alone concerns mankind, their 
serene and gladsome influence on the mind. The greater part 15 
of poetry is about the stars ; and very justly, for they are them- 
selves the most classical of poets. These same far-away worlds, 
sprinkled like tapers or shaken together like a diamond dust 
upon the sky, had looked not otherwise to Roland or Cavalier, 
when, in the words of the latter, they had " no other tent but 20 
the sky, and no other bed than my mother earth." 

All night a strong wind blew up the valley, and the acorns 
fell pattering over me from the oak. Yet, on this first night of 
October, the air was as mild as May, and I slept with the fur 
thrown back. 25 

I v,as much disturbed by the barking of a dog, an animal that 
I fear more than any wolf. A dog is vastly braver, and is be- 
sides supported by the sense of duty. If you kill a wolf, you 
meet with encouragement and praise ; but if you kill a dog, the 
sacred rights of property and the domestic affections come clam- 30 
oring round you for redress. At the end of a fagging day, the 
sharp, cruel note of a dog's bark is in itself a keen annoyance ; 
and to a tramp like myself, he represents the sedentary and 
respectable world in its most hostile form. There is something 



220 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

of the clergyman or the lawyer about this engaging animal ; and 
if he were not amenable to stones, the boldest man would shrink 
from traveling afoot. I respect dogs much in the domestic circle ; 
but on the highway or sleeping afield, I both detest and fear 
5 them. 

I was wakened next morning (Wednesday, October 2d) by 
the same dog — for I knew his bark — making a charge down 
the bank, and then, seeing me sit up, retreating again with great 
alacrity. The stars were not yet quite extinguished. The heaven 

10 was of that enchanting mild gray-blue of the early morn. A still 
clear light began to fall, and the trees on the hillside were out- 
lined sharply against the sky. The wind had veered more to 
the north, and no longer reached me in the glen ; but as I was 
going on with my preparations, it drove a white cloud very 

1 5 swiftly over the hilltop ; and looking up, I was surprised to see 
the cloud dyed with gold. In these high regions of the air, the 
sun was already shining as at noon. If only the clouds traveled 
high enough, we should see the same thing all night long. For 
it is always daylight in the fields of space. 

20 As I began to go up the valley, a draft of wind came down 
it out of the seat of the sunrise, although the clouds continued 
to run overhead in an almost contrary direction. A few steps 
farther, and I saw a whole hillside gilded with the sun ; and still 
a little beyond, between two peaks, a center of dazzling brilliancy 

25 appeared floating in the sky, and I was once more face to face 
with the big bonfire that occupies the kernel of our system. 

I met but one human being that forenoon, a dark military- 
looking wayfarer, who carried a game bag on a baldric ; but he 
made a remark that seems worthy of record. For when I asked 

30 him if he were Protestant or Catholic — 

" O," said he, " I make no shame of my religion. I am a 
Catholic." 

He made no shame of it ! The phrase is a piece of natural 
statistics ; for it is the language of one in a minority. T thought 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CA^HSARDS 221 

with a smile of Bavilc and his dragoons, and how 3011 may ride 
roughshod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the 
more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic ; the Ce'- 
vennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law papers, nor 
the hoofs and pistol butts of a regiment of horse, that can change 5 
one tittle of a plowman's thoughts. Outdoor rustic people have 
not many ideas, but such as they have are hardy plants and 
thrive flourishingly in persecution. One who has grown a long 
while in the sweat of laborious noons, and under the stars at 
night, a frequenter of hills and forests, an old honest country- 10 
man, has, in the end, a sense of communion with the powers 
of the universe, and amicable relations towards his God. Like 
my mountain Plymouth Brother, he knows the Lord. His reli- 
gion does not repose upon a choice of logic ; it is the poetry of 
the man's experience, the philosophy of the history of his life. 15 
God, like a great power, like a great shining sun, has appeared 
to this simple fellow in the course of years, and become the 
ground and essence of his least reflections ; and you may change 
creeds and dogmas by authority, or proclaim a new religion with 
the sound of trumpets, if you will ; but here is a man who has 20 
his own thoughts, and will stubbornly adhere to them in good 
and evil. He is a Catholic, a Protestant, or a Plymouth Brother, 
in the same indefeasible sense that a man is not a woman, or 
a woman not a man. For he could not vary from his faith, un- 
less he could eradicate all memory of the past, and, in a strict 25 
and not a conventional meaning, change his mind. 



THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY 

I was now drawing near to Cassagnas, a cluster of black 
roofs upon the hillside, in this wild valley, among chestnut 
gardens, and looked upon in the clear air by many rocky peaks. 
The road along the Mimente is yet new, nor have the moun- 
5 taineers recovered their surprise when the first cart arrived at 
Cassagnas. But although it lay thus apart from the current 
of men's business, this hamlet had already made a figure in the 
history of France. Hard by, in caverns of the mountain, was 
one of the five arsenals of the Camisards ; where they laid up 

lo clothes and corn and arms against necessity, forged bayonets 
and sabers, and made themselves gunpowder with willow 
charcoal and saltpeter boiled in kettles. To the same caves, 
amid this multifarious industry, the sick and wounded were 
brought up to heal ; and there they were visited by the two 

15 surgeons, Chabrier and Tavan, and secretly nursed by women 
of the neighborhood. 

Of the five legions into which the Camisards were divided, it 
was the oldest and the most obscure that had its magazines by 
Cassagnas. This was the band of Spirit Se'guier ; men who had 

20 joined their voices with his in the 68th Psalm as they marched 

' down by night on the archpriest of the Ce'vennes. Se'guier, 
promoted to heaven, was succeeded by Salomon Couderc, whom 
Cavalier treats in his memoirs as chaplain-general to the whole 
army of the Camisards. He was a prophet ; a great reader of 

25 the heart, who admitted people to the sacrament or refused them 
by '' intentively viewing every man " between the eyes ; and 
had the most of the Scriptures off by rote. And this was surely 
happy ; since in a surprise in August, 1703, he lost his mule, his 
portfolios, and his Bible. It is only strange that they were not 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 223 

surprised more often and more effectually ; for this legion of 
Cassagnas was truly patriarchal in its theory of war, and camped 
without sentries, leaving that duty to the angels of the God for 
whom they fought. This is a token, not only of their faith, but 
of the trackless country where they harbored. M. de Caladon, 5 
taking a stroll one fine day, walked without warning into their 
midst, as he might have walked into "a flock of sheep in a plain," 
and found some asleep and some awake and psalm singing. A 
traitor had need of no recommendation to insinuate himself 
among their ranks, beyond " his faculty of singing psalms " ; 10 
and even the prophet Salomon " took him into a particular 
friendship." Thus, among their intricate hills, the rustic troop 
subsisted ; and history can attribute few exploits to them but 
sacraments and ecstasies. 

People of this tough and simple stock will not, as I have just 15 
been saying, prove variable in religion ; nor will they get nearer 
to apostasy than a mere external conformity like that of Naaman 
in the house of Rimmon. When Louis XVI, in the words of 
the edict, '' convinced by the uselessness of a century of perse- 
cutions, and rather from necessity than sympathy," granted at 20 
last a royal grace of toleration, Cassagnas was still Protestant ; 
and to a man, it is so to this day. There is, indeed, one family 
that is not Protestant, but neither is it Catholic. It is that of a 
Catholic cure in revolt, who has taken to his bosom a school- 
mistress. And his conduct, it 's worth noting, is disapproved 25 
by the Protestant villagers. 

''It is a bad idea for a man," said one, ''to go back from 
his engagements." 

The villagers whom I saw seemed intelligent after a countri- 
fied fashion, and were all plain and dignified in manner. As a 30 
Protestant myself, I was well looked upon, and my acquaintance 
with history gained me farther respect. For we had something 
not unlike a religious controversy at table, a gendarme and a 
merchant with whom I dined being both strangers to the place 



224 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

and Catholics. The young men of the house stood round and 
supported me ; and the whole discussion was tolerantly con- 
ducted, and surprised a man brought up among the infinitesimal 
and contentious differences of Scotland. The merchant, indeed, 
5 grew a little warm, and was far less pleased than some others 
with my historical acquirements. But the gendarme was mighty 
easy over it all. 

'' It 's a bad idea for a man to change," said he ; and the 
remark was generally applauded. 

lo That was not the opinion of the priest and soldier at our Lady 
of the Snows. But this is a different race ; and perhaps the 
same great-heartedness that upheld them to resist, now enables 
them to differ in a kind spirit. For courage respects courage ; 
but where a faith has been trodden out, we may look for a mean 

15 and narrow population. The true work of Bruce and Wallace 
was the union of the nations ; not that they should stand apart 
awhile longer, skirmishing upon their borders ; but that, when 
the time came, they might unite with self-respect. The merchant 
was much interested in my journey, and thought it dangerous 

20 to sleep afield. 

'' There are the wolves," said he ; " and then it is known you 
are an Englishman. The English have always long purses, and 
it might very well enter into some one's head to deal you an ill 
blow some night." 

25 I told him I was not much afraid of such accidents; and at 
any rate judged it unwise to dwell upon alarms or consider small 
perils in the arrangement of life. Life itself, I submitted, was a 
far too risky business as a whole to make each additional par- 
ticular of danger worth regard. '' Something," said I, " might 

30 burst in your inside any day of the week, and there would be an 
end of you, if you were locked into your room with three turns 
of the key." 

" Cepejidafif,'' said he, "^^ coucher dehors I '' 
'' God," said I, ''is everywhere." 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 225 

"" Cepe?ida?if, coiicher dehors /'^ he repeated, and his voice was 
eloquent of terror. 

He was the only person, in all my voyage, who saw anything 
hardy in so simple a proceeding ; although many considered it 
superfluous. Only one, on the other hand, professed much de- 5 
light in the idea ; and that was my Plymouth Brother, who cried 
out, when I told him I sometimes preferred sleeping under the 
stars to a close and noisy alehouse, " Now I see that you know 
the Lord ! " 

The merchant asked me for one of my cards as I was leaving, 10 
for he said I should be something to talk of in the future, and 
desired me to make a note of his request and reason ; a desire 
with which I have thus complied. 

A little after two I struck across the Mimente, and took a 
rugged path southward up a hillside covered with loose stones 15 
and tufts of heather. At the top, as is the habit of the country, 
the path disappeared ; and I left my she-ass munching heather, 
and went forward alone to seek a road. 

I was now on the separation of two vast watersheds ; behind 
me all the streams were bound for the Garonne and the Western 20 
Ocean ; before me was the basin of the Rhone. Hence, as from 
the Lozere, you can see in clear weather the shining of the Gulf of 
Lyons ; and perhaps from here the soldiers of Salomon may have 
watched for the topsails of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, and the long- 
promised aid from England. You may take this ridge as lying 25 
in the heart of the country of the Camisards ; four of the five 
legions camped all round it and almost within view — Salomon 
and Joani to the north, Castanet and Roland to the south ; and 
when Julien had finished his famous work, the devastation of the 
High Cevennes, which lasted all through October and Novem- 30 
ber, 1703, and during which four hundred and sixty villages and 
hamlets were, with fire and pickax, utterly subverted, a man 
standing on this eminence would have looked forth upon a silent, 
smokeless, and dispeopled land. Time and man's activity have 



226 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

now repaired these ruins ; Cassagnas is once more roofed and 
sending up domestic smoke ; and in the chestnut gardens, in 
low and leafy corners, many a prosperous farmer returns, when 
the day's work is done, to his children and bright hearth. And 
5 still it was perhaps the wildest view of all my journey. Peak 
upon peak, chain upon chain of hills ran surging southward, 
channeled and sculptured by the winter streams, feathered from 
head to foot with chestnuts, and here and there breaking out 
into a coronal of cliffs. The sun, which was still far from setting, 

lo sent a drift of misty gold across the hilltops, but the valleys 
were already plunged in a profound and quiet shadow. 

A very old shepherd, hobbling on a pair of sticks, and wear- 
ing a black cap of liberty, as if in honor of his nearness to the 
grave, directed me to the road for St. Germain de Calberte. 

15 There was something solemn in the isolation of this infirm and 
ancient creature. Where he dwelt, how he got upon this high 
ridge, or how he proposed to get down again, were more than 
I could fancy. Not far off upon my right was the famous Plan 
de Font Morte, where Poul with his Armenian saber slashed 

20 down the Camisards of Se'guier. This, methought, might be 
some Rip van Winkle of the war, who had lost his comrades, 
fleeing before Poul, and wandered ever since upon the moun- 
tains. It might be news to him that Cavalier had surrendered, 
or Roland had fallen fighting with his back against an olive. 

25 And while I was thus working on my fancy, I heard him hailing 
in broken tones, and saw him waving me to come back with 
one of his two sticks. I had already got some way past him ; 
but, leaving Modestine once more, retraced my steps. 

Alas, it was a very commonplace affair. The old gentleman 

30 had forgot to ask the peddler what he sold, and wished to 
remedy this neglect. 

I told him sternly, " Nothing." 

'' Nothing ? " cried he. 

I repeated '' Nothing," and made off. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 22/ 

It 's odd to think of, but perhaps I thus became as inexpli- 
cable to the old man as he had been to me. 

The road lay under chestnuts, and though I saw a hamlet or 
two below me in the vale, and many lone houses of the chest- 
nut farmers, it was a very solitary march all afternoon ; and 5 
the evening began early underneath the trees. But I heard the 
voice of a woman singing some sad, old, endless ballad not far 
off. It seemed to be about love and a bel amoureux, her hand- 
some sweetheart ; and I wished I could have taken up the 
strain and answered her, as I went on upon my invisible wood- 10 
land way, weaving, like Pippa in the poem, my own thoughts 
with hers. What could I have told her ? Little enough ; and 
yet all the heart requires. How the world gives and takes away, 
and brings sweethearts near, only to separate them again into 
distant and strange lands ; but to love is the great amulet 1 5 
which makes the world a garden ; and " hope, which comes to 
all," outwears the accidents of life, and reaches with tremulous 
hand beyond the grave and death. Easy to say : yea, but also, 
by God's mercy, both easy and grateful to believe ! 

We struck at last into a wide white highroad, carpeted with 20 
noiseless dust. The night had come ; the moon had been shin- 
ing for a long while upon the opposite mountain ; when on 
turning a corner my donkey and I issued ourselves into her 
light. I had emptied out my brandy at Florae, for I could 
bear the stuff no longer, and replaced it with some generous 25 
and scented Volnay ; and now I drank to the moon's sacred 
majesty upon the road. It was but a couple of mouthfuls ; yet 
I became thenceforth unconscious of my limbs, and my blood 
flowed with luxury. Even Modestine was inspired by this puri- 
fied nocturnal sunshine, and bestirred her little hoofs as to a 30 
livelier measure. The road wound and descended swiftly among 
masses of chestnuts. Hot dust rose from our feet and flowed 
away. Our two shadows — mine deformed with the knapsack, 
hers comically bestridden by the pack — now lay before us 



228 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

clearly outlined on the road, and now, as we turned a corner, 
went off into the ghostly distance, and sailed along the moun- 
tainlike clouds. From time to time a warm wind rustled down 
the valley, and set all the chestnuts dangling their bunches of 
5 foliage and fruit ; the ear was filled with whispering music, and 
the shadows danced in tune. And next moment the breeze 
had gone by, and in all the valley nothing moved except our 
traveling feet. On the opposite slope, the monstrous ribs and 
gullies of the mountain were faintly designed in the moon- 

lo shine ; and high overhead, in some lone house, there burned 
one lighted window, one square spark of red in the huge field 
of sad nocturnal coloring. 

At a certain point, as I went downward, turning many acute 
angles, the moon disappeared behind the hill ; and I pursued 

15 my way in great darkness, until another turning shot me with- 
out preparation into St. Germain de Calberte. The place was 
asleep and silent, and buried in opaque night. Only from a sin- 
gle open door, some lamplight escaped upon the road to show 
me I was come among men's habitations. The two last gossips 

20 of the evening, still talking by a garden wall, directed me to the 
inn. The landlady was getting her chicks to bed ; the fire was 
already out, and had, not without grumbling, to be rekindled ; 
half an hour later, and I must have gone supperless to roost. 



THE LAST DAY 

When I awoke (Thursday, 3d October), and, hearing a great 
flourishing of cocks and chuckling of contented hens, betook me 
to the window of the clean and comfortable room where I had 
slept the night, I looked forth on a sunshiny morning in a deep 
vale of chestnut gardens. It was still early, and the cockcrows, 5 
and the slanting lights, and the long shadows encouraged me to 
be out and look round me. 

St. Germain de Calberte is a great parish nine leagues round 
about. At the period of the wars, and immediately before the 
devastation, it was inhabited by two hundred and seventy-five 10 
families, of which only nine were Catholic ; and it took the cure 
seventeen September days to go from house to house on horse- 
back for a census. But the place itself, although capital of a 
canton, is scarce larger than a hamlet. It lies terraced across a 
steep slope in the midst of mighty chestnuts. The Protestant 15 
chapel stands below upon a shoulder ; in the midst of the town 
is the quaint old Catholic church. 

It was here that poor Du Chayla, the Christian martyr, kept 
his library and held a court of missionaries ; here he had built 
his tomb, thinking to lie among a grateful population whom he 20 
had redeemed from error; and hither on the morrow of his 
death they brought the body, pierced with two-and-fifty wounds, 
to be interred. Clad in his priestly robes, he was laid out in 
state in the church. The cure, taking his text from Second 
Samuel, twentieth chapter and twelfth verse, '' And Amasa 25 
wallowed in his blood in the highway," preached a rousing 
sermon, and exhorted his brethren to die each at his post, 
like their unhappy and illustrious superior. In the midst of 
this eloquence there came a breeze that Spirit Se'guier was 
near at hand ; and behold ! all the assembly took to their 30 

229 



230 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

horses' heels, some east, some west, and the cure himself as 
far as Alais. 

Strange was the position of this little Catholic metropolis, a 
thimbleful of Rome, in such a wild and contrary neighborhood. 
5 On the one hand, the legion of Salomon overlooked it from 
Cassagnas ; on the other, it was cut off from assistance by the 
legion of Roland at Mialet. The cure^ Louvrelenil, although 
he took a panic at the archpriest's funeral, and so hurriedly de- 
camped to Alais, stood well by his isolated pulpit, and thence 

10 uttered fulminations against the crimes of the Protestants. 
Salomon besieged the village for an hour and a half, but was 
beat back. The militiamen, on guard before the cure's door, 
could be heard, in the black hours, singing Protestant psalms 
and holding friendly talk with the insurgents. And in the morn- 

15 ing, although not a shot had been fired, there would not be a 
round of powder in their flasks. Where was it gone ? All 
handed over to the Camisards for a consideration. Untrusty 
guardians for an isolated priest ! 

That these continual stirs were once busy in St. Germain de 

20 Calberte, the imagination with difficulty receives ; all is now so 
quiet, the pulse of human life now beats so low and still in this 
hamlet of the mountains. Boys followed me a great way off, 
like a timid sort of lion hunters ; and people turned round to 
have a second look, or came out of their houses, as I went by. 

25 My passage was the first event, you would have fancied, since 
the Camisards. There was nothing rude or forward in this ob- 
servation ; it was but a pleased and wondering scrutiny, like 
that of oxen or the human infant ; yet it wearied my spirits, and 
soon drove me from the street. 

30 I took refuge on the terraces, which are here greenly carpeted 
with sward, and tried to imitate with a pencil the inimitable atti- 
tudes of the chestnuts as they bear up their canopy of leaves. 
Ever and again a little wind went by, and the nuts dropped all 
around me, with a light and dull sound, upon the sward. The 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 23 1 

noise was as of a thin fall of great hailstones ; but there went 
with it a cheerful human sentiment of an approaching harvest 
and farmers rejoicing in their gains. Looking up, I could see 
the brown nut peering through the husk, which was already 
gaping ; and between the stems the eye embraced an amphi- 5 
theater of hill, sunlit and green with leaves. 

I have not often enjoyed a place more deeply. I moved in 
an atmosphere of pleasure, and felt light and quiet and content. 
But perhaps it was not the place alone that so disposed my 
spirit. Perhaps some one was thinking of me in another coun- 10 
try ; or perhaps some thought of my own had come and gone 
unnoticed, and yet done me good. For some thoughts, which 
sure would be the most beautiful, vanish before we can rightly 
scan their features ; as though a god, traveling by our green 
highways, should but ope the door, give one smiling look into 15 
the house, and go again forever. Was it Apollo, or Mercury, 
or Love with folded wings ? Who shall say .'' But we go the 
lighter about our business, and feel peace and pleasure in 
our hearts. 

I dined with a pair of Catholics. They agreed in the con- 20 
demnation of a young man, a Catholic, who had married a 
Protestant girl and gone over to the religion of his wife. A 
Protestant born they could understand and respect ; indeed, 
they seemed to be of the mind of an old Catholic woman, who 
told me that same day there was no difference between the two 25 
sects, save that " wrong was more wrong for the Catholic," who 
had more light and guidance ; but this of a man's desertion 
filled them with contempt. 

" It is a bad idea for a man to change," said one. 

It may have been accidental, but you see how this phrase 30 
pursued me ; and for myself, I believe it is the current philos- 
ophy in these parts. I have some difficulty in imagining a better. 
It 's not only a great flight of confidence for a man to change 
his creed and go out of his family for heaven's sake ; but the 



232 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

odds are — nay, and the hope is — that, with all this great tran- 
sition in the eyes of man, he has not changed himself a hair's 
breadth to the eyes of God. Honor to those who do so, for the 
wrench is sore. But it argues something narrow, whether of 
5 strength or weakness, whether of the prophet or the fool, in 
those who can take a sufficient interest in such infinitesimal and 
human operations, or who can quit a friendship for a doubtful 
process of the mind. And I think I should not leave my old 
creed for another, changing only words for other words ; but 

lo by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find 
wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions. 

The phylloxera was in the neighborhood ; and instead of 
wine we drank at dinner a more economical juice of the grape 
— la Parisienne, they call it. It is made by putting the fruit 

1 5 whole into a cask with water ; one by one the berries ferment 
and burst ; what is drunk during the day is supplied at night 
in water ; so, with ever another pitcher from the well, and ever 

' another grape exploding and giving out its strength, one cask 
of Parisienne may last a family till spring. It is, as the reader 

20 will anticipate, a feeble beverage, but very pleasant to the taste. 

What with dinner and coffee, it was long past three before I 

left St. Germain de Calberte. I went down beside the Gardon 

of Mialet, a great glaring watercourse devoid of water, and 

through St. J^tienne de Vallee Fran^aise, or Val Francesque, as 

25 they used to call it ; and towards evening began to ascend the 
hill of St. Pierre. It was a long and steep ascent. Behind me 
an empty carriage returning to St. Jean du Gard kept hard 
upon my tracks, and near the summit overtook me. The 
driver, like the rest of the world, was sure I was a peddler ; 

30 but, unlike others, he was sure of what I had to sell. He had 
noticed the blue wool which hung out of my pack at either end ; 
and from this he had decided, beyond my power to alter his 
decision, that I dealt in blue-wool collars, such as decorate the 
neck of the French draft horse. 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 233 

I had hurried to the topmost powers of Modestine, for I 
dearly desired to see the view upon the other side before the 
day had faded. But it was night when I reached the summit ; 
the moon was riding high and clear ; and only a few gray streaks 
of twilight lingered in the west. A yawning valley, gulfed in black- 5 
ness, lay like a hole in created Nature at my feet ; but the outline 
of the hills was sharp against the sky. There was Mount Aigoal, 
the stronghold of Castanet. And Castanet, not only as an active 
undertaking leader, deserves some mention among Camisards ; 
for there is a spray of rose among his laurel ; and he showed 10 
how, even in a public tragedy, love will have its way. In the 
high tide of war he married, in his mountain citadel, a young 
and pretty lass called Mariette. There were great rejoicings ; 
and the bridegroom released five-and-twenty prisoners in honor 
of the glad event. Seven months afterwards Mariette, the 15 
Princess of the Ce'vennes, as they called her in derision, fell 
into the hands of the authorities, where it was like to have gone 
hard with her. But Castanet was a man of execution, and loved 
his wife. He fell on Valleraugue, and got a lady there for a 
hostage ; and for the first and last time in that war there was 20 
an exchange of prisoners. Their daughter, pledge of some starry 
night upon Mount Aigoal, has left descendants to this day. 

Modestine and I — it was our last meal together — had a 
snack upon the top of St. Pierre, I on a heap of stones, she 
standing by me in the moonlight and decorously eating bread 25 
out of my hand. The poor brute would eat more heartily in this 
manner; for she had a sort of affection for me, which I was 
soon to betray. 

It was a long descent upon St. Jean du Gard, and we met no 
one but a carter, visible afar off by the glint of the moon on 30 
his extinguished lantern. 

Before ten o'clock we had got in and were at supper ; fifteen 
miles and a stiff hill in little beyond six hours 1 



FAREWELL, MO DESTINE 

On examination, on the morning of October 4th, Modestine 
was pronounced unfit for travel. She would need at least two 
days' repose according to the ostler ; but I was now eager to 
reach Alais for my letters ; and, being in a civilized country 
5 of stage coaches, I determined to sell my lady friend and be off 
by the diligence that afternoon. Our yesterday's march, with 
the testimony of the driver who had pursued us up the long 
hill of St. Pierre, spread a favorable notion of my donkey's 
capabilities. Intending purchasers were aware of an unrivaled 

10 opportunity. Before ten I had an offer of twenty-five francs ; 
and before noon, after a desperate engagement, I sold her, 
saddle and all, for five-and-thirty. The pecuniary gain is not 
obvious, but I had bought freedom into the bargain. 

St. Jean du Gard is a large place and largely Protestant. 

1 5 The maire, a Protestant, asked me to help him in a small matter 
which is itself characteristic of the country. The young women 
of the Ce'vennes profit by the common religion and the differ- 
ence of the language to go largely as governesses into England ; 
and here was one, a native of Mialet, struggling with English 

20 circulars from two different agencies in London. I gave what 
help I could ; and volunteered some advice, which struck me 
as being excellent. 

One thing more I note. The phylloxera has ravaged the vine- 
yards in this neighborhood ; and in the early morning, under 

25 some chestnuts by the river, I found a party of men working 
with a cider press. I could not at first make out what they 
were after, and asked one fellow to explain. 

'' Making cider," he said. " Oiii, c'est comme fa. Conwie 
dans le nord!^^ 

234 



THE COUNTRY OF THE CAMISARDS 235 

There was a ring of sarcasm in his voice ; the country was 
going to the devil. 

It was not until 1 was fairly seated by the driver, and rattling 
through a rocky valley with dwarf olives, that I became aware 
of my bereavement. I had lost Modestine. Up to that moment 5 
I had thought I hated her ; but now she was gone, 

"And, O, 
The difference to me ! " 

For twelve days we had been fast companions ; we had 
traveled upwards of a hundred and twenty miles, crossed 10 
several respectable ridges, and jogged along with our six legs 
by many a rocky and many a boggy byroad. After the first 
day, although sometimes I was hurt and distant in manner, I 
still kept my patience ; and as for her, poor soul ! she had 
come to regard me as a god. She loved to eat out of my hand. 15 
She was patient, elegant in form, the color of an ideal mouse, 
and inimitably small. Her faults were those of her race and 
sex ; her virtues were her own. Farewell, and if forever — 

Father Adam wept when he sold her to me ; after I had sold 
her in my turn, I was tempted to follow his example ; and be- 20 
ing alone with a stage driver and four or five agreeable young 
men, I did not hesitate to yield to my emotion. 



NOTES 

(The figures in heavy-faced type refer to pages, the figures in lighter type to lines.) 

AN INLAND VOYAGE 

3 Sir Walter Grindlay Simpson, Bart. : (1843-1898) ; son of Sir James 
Simpson. See Balfour's " Life of Stevenson," I, 107. 

3 11 burgee : a swallow-tailed flag or pennant used in the merchant 
marine and bearing the ship's name. 

3 17 Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne : the year following their 
canoe trip Stevenson and Simpson planned to journey along the canals 
and rivers of France to the Mediterranean in a barge named after the 
eleven thousand virgins who, according to the legend, were massacred 
at Cologne by the Huns. This boat was bought, but owing to finan- 
cial difficulties it was sold along with their canoes, and the idea was 
abandoned. 

3 30 tricolor : the flag of Belgium, in red, yellow, and black. 

5 23 Caleb and Joshua : see Numbers xiii, 23. 

7 1 stevedore : one who loads and unloads vessels. 

7 20 sheet : the rope attached to the lower edge of the sail. 

8 15 heady : stirring, exciting. 

9 3 sanded : with sand sprinkled on the floor. 

9 7 bagman : a commercial traveler. 

10 1 Miss Howe or Miss Harlowe : Clarissa Harlowe was the heroine 
of a novel bearing her name, written by Samuel Richardson and pub- 
lished in 1748. Miss Howe was her confidante. In a letter to Patchett 
Martin, December, 1877, Stevenson records his estimate of this book 
(see "Correspondence," ed. by S. Colvin, p. 141). 

10 4 the divine huntress : Diana. 

10 6 Anthony: St. Anthony (251-356), one of the most famous of 
the early saints, who is said to have founded the first monastic commu- 
nity when he retired to the desert. 

10 8 gymnosophist (pronounced jim-nos'o-phist) : one of a sect of 
ancient Hindu philosophers who lived solitarily in the woods and gave 
themselves wholly to mystic contemplation (cf. p. 23, 1. 17). 

237 



238 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

11 1 Willebroek Canal : connecting Brussels with the Rupel and the 
Scheldt. The town of that name, two miles south of Boom, is famous 
for its paper mills. 

1115 '^^C'est vite, mats c'est long'': equivalent to 'You are going 
fast, but you have a long journey.' 

11 20 dingy (din'gy) : a small boat. 

13 7 Villevorde : scene (Aug. 5, 1536) of the martyrdom of William 
Tyndale, the English translator of the Bible. 

13 10 Etna cooking apparatus : a vessel used for heating water ; it 
consists of a cup or vase for the water, with a fixed saucer surrounding 
it, in which alcohol is burned. 

13 13 a la papier : ' in paper.' 

13 14 Flemish : pertaining to Flanders, an ancient countship now 
divided between Belgium, France, and the Netherlands ; specifically a 
member of the Flemish race, nearly allied to the Dutch both in blood 
and in language. 

13 24 loo-warm : tepid ; the forms " lew-warm " and " luke-warm " also 
appear (see p. 108, 1. i). 

13 24 fricassee: a dish made by cutting meat into small pieces and 
stewing with gravy in a frying pan. 

14 10 sterlings: 'starling'; an inclosure like a cofferdam, formed 
of piles driven close together before any work or structure as a pro- 
tection against the wash of the waves. — buttresses : structures built 
against a wall to insure stability. 

14 21 trepanned : a surgical operation in which parts of the bones 
of the skull are removed in order to relieve pressure or irritation on 
the brain. 

16 1 Laeken : the northeast suburb of Brussels, the usual residence 
of the royal family. 

16 4 AUee Verte : a double avenue of limes, planted in 1707 and 
extending along the banks of the Willebroek Canal to Laeken. This 
avenue was formerly the most fashionable promenade at Brussels, but 
it is now deserted. 

16 it estaminet: ' a tavern.' 

16 25 Royal Sport Nautique: ' Royal Nautical Sport.' 

17 4 Huguenots : the Puritans of France ; a name applied to all 
French Protestants and first used about 1560, being apparently im- 
ported from Geneva. The Pluguenots were persecuted in the reign of 
Francis I, and subsequently vigorously defended themselves until the 
massacre of St. Bartholomew, Aug. 24, 1572. Later, in 1598, the Edict 
of Nantes secured to them full political and civil rights. Its revocation 



NOTES 239 

by Louis XIV in 1685, and the persecution which followed, drove 
many of them to exile in Prussia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Eng- 
land, and America. 

17 ») out of great tribulation : Revelation vii, 14. 

17 2(5 entre f feres : 'between brothers.' " French was the only foreign 
tongue Stevenson ever mastered, and in that he acquired real pro- 
ficiency " (Balfour's "Life," p. 153, 11. 8-9). The French introduced 
into these selections is semicoloquial in its character. 

17 28 " En Angleterre, vous employ ez des sliding -seats, n'est-ce pas ? " ; 
'in England you use sliding seats, do you not?' 

17 30 voyez-vous, nous sommes serieux: 'you see we are in earnest.' 

18 9 nice and nasty : compare Swift, "A nice man is a man of nasty 
ideas" ("Thoughts on Various Subjects"). 

18 32 "Mammon . . . Heaven": " Paradise Lost," I, 679. 

. . . for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific. 

Mammon : name employed by Milton from its use in a passage in the 
New Testament (Matthew vi, 24) to personify the spirit of worldliness 
and riches. 

20 7 desire to drive the coursers of the sun against Apollo : see the fable 
of Phaethon in Greek mythology. 

20 10 The great billows had gone over our head : see Psalms xlii, 7. 

21 3 Charleroi : a manufacturing town and fortress founded by 
Charles II of Spain in 1666. 

21 10 He is, somehow or other, a marked man for the official eye : see 
"Epilogue," pp. 1 18-130, for a humorous description of a similarly un- 
fortunate experience which actually occurred to Stevenson in 1875 
during a walk up the valley of the Loing with his present companion. 
Sidney Colvin speaks of him (Introduction to " Letters of R. L. S.," 
p. xxxix) as a " slender, slovenly, nondescript apparition, long-visaged 
and long-haired," who " had only to speak in order to be recognized 
in the first minute for a witty and charming gentleman, and within 
the first five for a master spirit and man of genius. There were 
indeed certain stolidly conventional and superciliously official kinds 
of persons, both at home and abroad, who were incapable of looking 
beyond the clothes, and eyed him always with frozen suspicion. This 
attitude used sometimes in youth to drive him into fits of flaming anger, 



240 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

which put him helplessly at a disadvantage unless, or until, he could 
call the sense of humour to his help." 

When Andrew Lang met him, at the age of twenty-two, he observed 
that " his smooth face, the more girlish by reason of his long hair, was 
hectic. Clad in a wide blue cloak he looked nothing less than English, 
except Scotch." This was, of course, about the date of the " Inland 
Voyage." See also Mrs. Stevenson's note in Biographical Edition, 
" Prince Otto," Preface, pp. vii-x, about the cause of Stevenson's un- 
kempt appearance, and Will H. Low's "A Chronicle of Friendships," 
chap. V. 

21 17 "Murray": the guidebook of France, issued by John Murray, 
the publisher, 1808-1892. 

22 2 knolled to church: see "As You Like It," II, vii, 113. 

If ever you have look'd on better days, 

If ever been where bells have knoU'd to church, 

If ever sat at any good man's feast. 

22 14 Maubeuge : a fortified town situated on both banks of the 
Sambre. It owes its origin to a nunnery and monastery, founded in the 
seventh century by St. Aldegonda. The veil and sandals of the saint are 
preserved in the church. — Grand Cerf: ' Great Stag ' or ' Tall Hart.' 

22 26 shutting the stable door after the steed is away : the proverb 
usually reads : " It is too late to shut the stable door after the horse is 
stolen." 

22 33 cenacula: ' secret meetings.' 

23 31 driver of the hotel omnibus : see Introduction, p. ix. 

24 8 Might not this have been a brave African traveler, or gone to the 
Indies after Drake ? : compare the " mute inglorious Milton " of Gray's 
" Elegy." Sir Francis Drake, the English naval hero ( 1 54o(?)-i 596), was 
the first English commander to see the Pacific, and to circumnavigate 
the globe, for which he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth. He com- 
manded under Howard in 1588 in the battle with the Spanish Armada. 

25 Sambre (pronounced Sonbr) : the Roman " Sabis." Caesar de- 
feated the Nervii on its banks in 57 B.C. See Shakespeare's "Julius 
Caesar," III, ii, 177. 

29 12 amphora : a big vase. 

30 () Bluebeard : the nickname of the Chevalier Raoul (an imagi- 
nary personage), celebrated for his cruelty. The original story, which 
may have been based on the career of a notorious Baron de Retz, was 
written in French about 1697, translated into English in the eighteenth 
century, and has been a part of nursery literature ever since. 



NOTES 241 

30 11 beknifed : furnished with knives. See also p. 46, h 23, " batter 
and bemaul." Compare " striplings bewhiskered with burnt cork," in 
Irving's " Sketch Book " (The Christmas Dinner). 

30 20 Jove or one of his Olympian compeers : the ruler of the gods or one 
of his associates, the gods and goddesses of Grecian mythology who 
dwelt on Mt. Olympus. For "compeers" compare Shelley's " Adonais," 

■ 5 • rouse thy obscure compeers. 

31 22 hold : stronghold, fortress. 

32 10 auberge: ' inn.' 

32 19 allegorical prints : engravings or photographs ostensibly repre- 
senting human characters, but so provided with emblems suitable to 
the various arts that the pictures become personifications of them. 

' ' 32 33 Hainauters : residents of Hainaut. Hainaut, or Hainault 
(ha-no), named from the river Haine, is a province of Belgium, 
bounded by West Flanders on the northwest, East Flanders and Bra- 
bant on the north, Namur on the east, and France on the southwest. 
It was originally a medieval countship. 

33 15 swipes : a kind of small beer. 

33 29 Lucretian maxim : the following maxim is from Lucretius, a 
celebrated Roman philosophical poet, born at Rome probably about 
96 B.C., died Oct. 15, 55 B.C. 

'T is sweet, when the seas are roughened by violent winds, to view on land 
the toils of others, not that there is pleasure in seeing others in distress, but be- 
cause man is glad to know himself secure. 

34 25 Landau : a four-wheeled carriage, the top of which, being made 
in two parts, may be closed or thrown open. The landau takes its name 
from a town in Germany, where the vehicle was first made. 

35 1 Like the lackeys in Moliere's farce : " Les Precieuses Ridicu- 
les," scene xiv. 

35 5 scurvy fellows : vile, low, mean. See " Romeo and Juliet," II, 
iv, 161 ; " The Tempest," II, ii, 46; " Henry V," V, i, 19. 
35 12 flibbertigibbet: see " King Lear," III, iv, 120. 

35 20 military kepi: a round-topped visored ' military cap.' 

36 12 galette : a pie or a cooky. 

37 32 explicable : accented on first syllable. 

40 Landrecies : a fortress on the Sambre, the birthplace of Dupleix 
( 1 697-1 764), the founder of the French power in India. 

40 10 Waterloo crackers : squibs. — Waterloo : the decisive battle 
fought near the village of that name south of Brussels on June 18, 
181 5, by the allied British, Dutch, and Germans, commanded by the 



242 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

Duke of Wdlington, against Napoleon, whose defeat was absolute. See 
Byron's famous passage in " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," Canto III, 
Thackeray's "Vanity Fair," and De Quincey's "English Mail-Coach." 
40 11 Austerlitz : a town in Moravia, situated on the Littawa, twelve 
miles east of Brunn. Near this town Napoleon signally defeated the 
combined armies of Russia and Austria, Dec. 2, 1805. 

In the military career of Napoleon no other event probably stands out so 
brilliantly as Austerlitz, because of his numerical inferiority, the audacity of his 
plan, the precision with which it was executed, and the completeness of the 
victory. — New International Encyclopedia, Vol. II, p. 262. 

40 14 Waterloo Bridge : a bridge over the Thames in London, opened 
in 18 1 7 on the anniversary of the battle. Its length is 1242 feet within 
the abutments, its width within balustrades is 42 feet, and the span of 
each of the nine arches is 120 feet. 

40 27 union jack : the English flag. 

41 11 the forest of Mormal : comprises 22,300 acres. 

42 5 the Reformation : the Protestant Reformation, dating from the 
publication at Wittenberg, by Martin Luther, of ninety-five theses 
against indulgences in 1517. 

42 13 Heine : Heinrich Heine, the German poet and critic, born in 
Diisseldorf, Prussia, Dec. 13, 1797, died in Paris, Feb. 17, 1856. 

42 14 Merlin : the famous magician and counselor of Arthur, king 
of Britain. See Tennyson's " Idylls of the King," especially " Merlin 
and Vivien." 

42 14 Broceliande : Heine, " Nachwort zum Romanzero " : " My body 
has shrunk so that nothing is left but my voice, and my bed reminds 
me of the sounding grave of the magician Merlin which is in the forest 
of Broceliande, in Brittany, under high oaks, whose tops flame toward 
the sky like green torches. Alas ! for these trees and their refresh- 
ing rustling I envy you colleague. Merlin." 

Tennyson, " Merlin and Vivien " : 

A storm was coming, but the winds were still. 
And in the wild woods of Broceliande, 
Before an oak, so hollow, huge, and old, 
It look'd a tower of ivied mason work, 
At MerUn's feet the wily Vivien lay. 



Then, in one moment, she put forth the charm 

Of woven paces and of waving hands, 

And in the hollow oak he lay as dead, 

And lost to life and use and name and fame. 



NOTES 243 

42 15 banyan grove : the " banian's " tree or tree of the Hindu mer- 
chants. Originally applied to one tree, then extended to cover all East 
Indian fig trees, whose branches drop shoots to the ground, take root, 
and support their parent stem. One tree will thus frequently cover a 
large expanse of ground. 

Compare Bryant's " Thanatopsis ": 

Or lose thyself in the continuous woods 
Where rolls the Oregon, and hears no sound, 
Save its own dashings. 

Compare also Shelley's '' Alastor." 

43 3 jeremiads : from Jeremiah, the Hebrew prophet, whose " Lamen- 
tations " form one of the books of the Old Testament. This name is 
applied to a writing or speech in a strain of grief or distress. 

45 12 bedlamite : from a corruption of Bethlehem, the hospital of 
vSt. Mary of Bethlehem in London, founded as a priory of Cistercian 
monks about 1247, and afterwards used as an asylum for lunatics. Tom 
o' Bedlam in " King Lear" typifies an insane person. In '' King John," 
II, i, 183, the word is used by the king as a fitting commentary to the 
raving of Constance. Here the weather is described as so stormy or 
boisterous as to appear insane. 

45 21 Marshal Clarke : Henri Jacques Guillaume Clarke (i 765-1818), 
a native of Landrecies, but of Irish descent; closely associated with 
Napoleon on his campaigns of 1805 and 1806, and appointed Minister 
of War in 1807. After the arrival of the allies before Paris he fled to 
Blois with the empress and declared himself a Royalist. He accom- 
panied Louis XVIII to Gaux, was made a peer in 1814, Minister of 
War, Marshal of France, and governor of the fourteenth military divi- 
sion (181 7). Napoleon had created him Comte d'Hunebourg in 1808, 
and Due de Feltre in 1809. 

46 19 up the heights of Alma : a small river in the Crimea, Russia, 
which flows into the Black Sea about twenty miles north of Sebastopol. 
Near its mouth (Sept. 20, 1854) the British, French, and Turkish forces 
defeated the Russians. 

46 20 Spicheren : a village in German Lorraine, three miles south of 
Saarbrucken. There (Aug. 6, 1870) the Germans defeated the French 
under Froisard. 

46 21 tuck : beat or flourish. 

46 26 bastinadoing : caning or cudgeling. 

47 11 hundreds: compare the use of "hundreds" by Miss Pross in 
Dickens's " A Tale of Two Cities," Book II, chap. vi. 



244 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

47 17 Juge de Paix: ' justice of the peace.' 

47 19 Scotch Sheriff Substitute : one of the two grades of sheriff, and 
the one who discharges the greater part of the duties of the office. 

48 11 poor laws : laws providing for the support of paupers at public 
expense. The act which is regarded as the foundation of the system 
was passed in i6oi. 

49 10 jerkin of Archangel tar : jerkin, a short, close-fitting coat. — 
Archangel : the chief commercial town in the north of Russia. Tar is 
one of its chief exports. 

49 13 Loch Caron : an inlet of the ocean in a parish of the same name 
on the west coast of Scotland, east of the Isle of Skye. 

50 8 progresses : a word specifically applied to a journey of royalty. 
Here merely a going forward. 

60 21 grace note : in music an embellishment not necessary to the 
harmony. — psalmody: the singing of hymns. 

60 28 pointer : a modified hound of medium size, differing from a set- 
ter in being close-haired. When game is scented he stands rigidly, with 
muzzle raised and his tail stretched out behind. 

61 31 HoUandais : probably a canary bird trained in Holland. 

62 1(3 canaletti: evidently a word of Stevenson's coining, used to 
indicate the dwellers in the canal boats. 
6218 '' CependanV : 'yet.' 

62 29 Compare p. 23, 1. 31. 

63 5 a wager : see "John Gilpin," stanza 29 : 

He carries weight ; he rides a race ! 
'T is for a thousand pound, 

64 2(> colza fields : fields of rape, cultivated for their oil. 

66 4 kingfisher : a small bird of brilliant colors supposed to be the 
" halcyon " of classical writers. 

65 (3 catholic : what is the force of this word .-' 

65 10 the reeds along the whole valley stood shivering : the story is 
that told by Mercury to Argus when at the command of Jupiter he 
sought lo. 

There was a certain nymph whose name was Syrinx, much beloved by the 
satyrs and spirits of the wood. She would have none of them, but was a faithful 
worshipper of Diana, and followed the chase. Pan, meeting her one day, wooed 
her with many compliments, likening her to Diana of the silver bow. Without 
stopping to hear him, she ran away. But on the bank of the river he overtook 
her. She called for help on her friends, the water nymphs. They heard and 
consented. Pan threw his arms around what he supposed to be the form of the 
nymph, and found that he embraced only a tuft of reeds. As he breathed a sigh, 



NOTES 245 

the air sounded through the reeds, and produced a plaintive melody. Whereupon, 
the god, charmed with the novelty, and with the sweetness of the music, said, 
" Thus then at least you shall be mine." Taking some of the reeds, of unequal 
lengths, and placing them together, side by side, he made an instrument and 
called it Syrinx, in honor of the nymph. — From " The Classic Myths in English 
Literature and in Art," pp. 93 and 94, Ginn and Company. 

56 16 taking sanctuary : taking refuge in a place, like a church, where 
they might be secure against punishment. In many Catholic countries 
certain churches were set apart for this purpose, especially during the 
Middle Ages. 

55 18 acold : cooled, chilled, cold. See King Lear, III, iv, 59, " Poor 
Tom 's a-cold." 

55 21 Pan : the personification of deity displayed in creation and per- 
vading all things. The god of material substance. 

56 26 Centaur : centaurs were mythical creatures living in Thessaly, 
half horses, half men. Chiron was the most famous. 

57 7 Bums who had just plowed up the Mountain Daisy : see Burns's 
poem describing the incident. 

67 16 " Come away, Death " : see the song in Shakespeare's " Twelfth 
Night," II, iv, 52. 

57 17 niyria : see " Twelfth Night," I, ii, 2. 

57 21 cadence : rhythm. See " Twelfth Night," I, i, 5, where " fall " 
is used in this sense. 

57 32 Birmingham-hearted substitutes : new ones made in Birmingham, 
England. Compare " The Bells of Shandon " by Father Prout and " The 
Bells " by E. A. Poe ; and " The Song of the Bell " by Schiller and 
" Easter Sunday before the Cathedral," in Longfellow's " Christus : A 
Mystery" (Golden Legend, III). See also The Living Age, Seventh 
Series, Vol. L, No. 3475, p. 332. 

68 7 weir : here a fence, as of twigs or stakes, set in a stream for catch- 
ing fish. For a description, with illustration, see the Century Dictionary. 

68 27 in a trice : ' in a crack,' a phrase in use in Scotland ; crack or 
noise made by the breaking of glass or other brittle substance. 

This incident is otherwise narrated in a letter to W. E. Henley, bear- 
ing date September, 1876, printed by Sidney Colvin (now Sir Sidney) 
in " Letters of R. L. S.," Vol. I, p. 134. 

60 3 queasy : ' uncomfortable ' (M. E. quaysy, queysy, causing a feel- 
ing of nausea). 

61 7 France, mes amours: ' O France, my Love.' 

61 12 since the war: the German war of 1870, ending in the defeat 
of Louis Napoleon and the fall of the Second Empire. 



246 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

61 14 Alsace : part of the territory ceded to Germany at the close of 
the war of 1870. The chief city is Strassburg. 

61 14 Les malheurs de la France: ' the misfortunes of France.' 

61 15 Fontainebleau : the most beautiful forest in France, covering 
42,500 acres; frequented by artists and much visited by Stevenson. 
In "A Chronicle of Friendships," Mr. Will H. Low describes their 
life when they were both members of the colony. See particularly 
chapter v. 

61 24 the Empire : the Second Empire ; the government of France 
under Napoleon III which fell at the battle of Sedan, Sept. i, 1870. 

61 25 affliction heightens love : the feeling of the French over the 
loss of Alsace and Lorraine still survives. See Daudet's " La derniere 
classe." 

61 27 India : the part of the Asiatic peninsula, from the Himalayas to 
the Indian Ocean, under British control. Trade relations were opened 
in 1600 ; an aggressive policy was carried on by Lord Clive and Warren 
Hastings during the eighteenth century. The relation between India 
and Great Britain forms a brilliant and exciting chapter in the his- 
tory of both countries (see Macaulay's essays on " Lord Clive " and 
" Warren Hastings "). 

621 Farmer George: George III, during whose reign the United 
States became independent of Great Britain. 

Possibly Stevenson had in mind the line in Thackeray's essay, " It 
was not splendid, but it was kind and worthy of Farmer George " {" The 
Four Georges," George HI). 

62 15 Caudine Forks : two passes in the mountains of ancient Sam- 
nium, Italy, leading to an inclosed valley. Here, in 321 B.C., the Romans 
surrendered to the Samnites. The whole army was forced to pass under 
the yoke. The incident is used to illustrate abject humiliation. 

62 24 Fletcher of Saltoun : Andrew Fletcher, born 1653, died in Lon- 
don, September, 17 16. A Scottish politician and political writer, promi- 
nent in the Scottish parliament under Charles II and William III. In 
a letter to the Marquis of Montrose he wrote, " I knew a very wise man 
that believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he 
need not care who should make the laws of a nation." 

62 28 Paul Deroul^de : a French author and politician, born Sept. 2, 
1846 (see "Chants du Soldat," 1872-187 5). 

63 24 Othello: see Shakespeare's "Othello," I, iii, 128-170. 

64 29 selvage : the edge of a web or texture so finished that it will 
not ravel. 

66 1 unhomely : unhomelike. 



NOTES 247 

66 5 with a full moon, the color of a melon : what color does this 
suggest ? 

67 12 his hair flourishing like Samson's : Samson, son of Manoah of 
the tribe of Dan, and fifteenth judge over Israel (see Book of Judges, 
xiii-xvi ; also Milton's drama " Samson Agonistes "). 

67 1() lymphatic : dull, as if the blood was supplied with too much 
lymph and hence was weak. 

67 17 Gaston (Ernest) Lafenestre: born 1841 in Melun; a pupil of 
Jacques. 

68 17 Jacques (Charles fimile) : French painter and engraver, born 
and died at Paris (18 13-1894). He remained almost the sole survivor 
of the Barbizon School. 

68 20 the National Gallery: the picture gallery on the north side of 
Trafalgar Square, London, founded in 1824. 

68 22 Precious in the sight of the Lord ... is the death of his saints : 
Psalms cxvi, 1 5. 

68 28 Barbizon : a small village near the forest of Fontainebleau, the 
resort of the modern French school of landscape painters, among whom 
were Theodore Rousseau, the founder, Corot, Dupre, Uaubigny, Diaz 
de la Peiia, Troyon, Fran9ois Millet, Courbet, Charles Le Roux, Fleury 
Veron, Flers, and Eugene Laville. It was in the fields near by that 
Millet painted " The Angelus." 

69 11 petard : an engine of war used especially in medieval times to 
blow in a door or a gate. It has been superseded by the bomb as an 
engine of destruction. 

69 16 proletarian : a member of the lower classes. 
69 26 logic : science or art of reasoning. 

69 31 Reasons are as plentiful as blackberries : see Shakespeare's 
" Henry IV," Part I, Act II, iv, 265. 

70 8 pro indiviso : ' undivided,' ' common.' 

70 33 ''Eh bien, quoi, c'estmagnifique": 'well, now, that is magnificent! ' 

71 22 the Inquisition : an ecclesiastical court in the Roman Catholic 
Church, officially styled the Holy Office, for the detection and punish- 
ment of heretics. It arose in the twelfth century, but was developed in 
the thirteenth by Pope Innocent III and placed in charge of the 
Dominicans. In the fifteenth century the Spanish Inquisition was in 
charge of the state and became noted for its cruelty. 

71 23 Poe's horrid story : Edgar Allan Poe, the poet and story-teller, 
born in Boston, Feb. 19, 1809, died in Baltimore, Oct. 7, 1849 (see his 
tale "The Pit and the Pendulum"). — "Tristram Shandy": a famous 
English novel by Laurence Sterne (1713-1768) (see Bk. I, chap. xvii). 



248 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

72 5 Nanty Ewart : a character in Scott's " Red Gauntlet " (chap. xv). 

Of whose Presbyterian education a hatred of Popery seemed to be the 
only remnant. 

72 12 Communist : one who advocates the total or partial abolition of 
the rights of private property. 

72 13 Communard : one who advocates government by the munici- 
pality or township. 

76 13 Bourse : the Stock Exchange. 

76 14 hecatomb : in classical antiquity (see Homer's Iliad) a sacrifice 
of a hundred oxen or other beasts. Hence any great sacrifice. 

76 22 siphon : the river was siphoned under the canal through a pipe. 
The travelers were in danger of being drawn down by the rush of water. 

76 34 La Fere : a fortified town ; was bombarded and taken by the 
Germans in 1S70. 

77 1 Niirnberg figures : named from the place of their manufacture, 
Nuremberg, a city in middle Franconia, Bavaria, on the Pegnitz. 

77 6 " C'est bon, n'est-ce pas 7 "; ' it is good, is it not ? ' 

78 24 reservists : soldiers who belong to the military reserve. 

80 23 set the temple of Diana on fire: Herostratus (b.c. 356) set the 
temple of Diana at Ephesus on fire for the sake of perpetuating his 
name. He did it, as it happened, on the night of the birth of Alexander 
the Great. 

80 29 Timon : Timon of Athens. A misanthrope of the fifth cen- 
tury B.C. (see Shakespeare's tragedy with this title). 

81 19 aubergiste, loge a pied. A la Croix de Malte : ' innkeeper, lodg- 
ing for pedestrians. At the Maltese Cross.' 

81 24 shakoes : a military hat in the form of a cylinder or truncated 
cone, stiff, with a visor in front, and generally having a plume or 
pompon. 

81 33 Zola : a distinguished French novelist, born in Paris, April 2, 
1840, died Sept. 29, 1902. For the description of the workingman's 
marriage party visiting the Louvre, see " L'Assommoir," chapter iii. 

83 12 Coucy : a village famous for its formidable castle now in ruins, 
one of the most striking monuments of the feudal ages. 

85 1 Noyon : known to the Romans as '' Noviodunum Veromanduo- 
rum." Charlemagne was here crowned king of the Franks in 768. 
Hugh Capet was here elected king in 987. Noyon is also noted as the 
birthplace of John Calvin (1509-1564). 

85 9 Hotel de Ville : town hall. 

85 11 " Put off thy shoes from off thy feet " : see Exodus iii, 5. 



NOTES 249 

85 13 Hotel du Nord : ' Northern Hotel.' 
85 15 all morning : all the morning. 

85 19 poop : the stern or afterpart of a ship. 

86 5 sacristan : a church officer who has charge of the sacred ves- 
sels and the altar furnishings. 

86 7 tessellated : made of small blocks. 

87 1 Miserere: Psalm LI, beginning " Miserere mei, domine," " Have 
mercy upon me, O God"; used in the communion of the sick, the burial 
service, and in services of similar nature. See Book of Common Prayer. 

87 14 darkling: see " King Lear," I, iv, 237. " Out went the candle, 
and we were left darkling," i.e. in the dark. 

87 17 "Ave Mary" : ' hail Mary, pray for us.' Luke i, 28, 42, used as 
an anthem. — garrison catch : see '' Twelfth Night," II, iii ; also The Song 
of the Three Pigeons, in " She Stoops to Conquer " ; also The Bishop 
Still Preaches, in " The Lady of the Lake." A catch was originally an 
unaccompanied round written as a continuous melody ; later, a round in 
which the words could be so pronounced by the different voices as to pro- 
duce a ludicrous effect, as " Three Blind Mice," " Scotland 's Burning." 

88 14 Jubilate Deo: ' O be joyful in the Lord,' Psalms LXVI and C, 
used in the Episcopal and Roman services. See Book of Common Prayer. 

88 21 solemnized : rendered solemn. 

88 25 department : in its civil administration France is divided into 
eighty-seven departments. At the head of each is a " prefect." As a 
rule, the size of the department varies between two and three thousand 
square miles. Their names are taken from their chief rivers or other 
striking natural features. They were formed in 1790 to replace the 
thirty-two provinces. See the map of France in Robinson's " Intro- 
duction to the History of Western Europe" (Ginn and Company), 
Vol. II, p. 216. 

90 11 waterhouses : canal-boats. 

9012 Deo Gratias: 'Thanks to God.' — Four Sons of Aymon: the 
Four Sons of Aymon are the heroes of a medieval romance. 

91 G floating lavatory : in Holland the clothes are carried to a float- 
ing stage at the bank of a river and are washed in the stream. 

92 1 Compiegne : Joan of Arc was here taken prisoner by the Bur- 
gundians in 1430. 

92 2() niminy : affectedly nice. 

93 4 Chailly road : an avenue near Barbizon. 

93 14 Gothic insecurity : seemingly insecure from the character of 
the architecture when compared with the classical style of the building. 
Compare a picture of the Cathedral of Milan with the Parthenon. 



250 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

93 15 gargoyled : furnished with grotesquely ornamented spouts rep- 
resenting the heads and necks of men or animals. — bedizened: decorated. 

93 18 Louis XII : {le pere du peiiple) ( 1498-1 51 5) ; the first king of the 
house of Valois, conqueror of Milan and (in alliance with the Spaniards) 
of Naples. 

94 15 centurion : a Roman military officer who commanded a century 
or company of infantry. — Via Dolorosa: ' Dolorous Way,' the path 
traversed by Christ from Pilate's Mall of Judgment to Calvary. 

95 1 for no other purpose than to be abroad : 

Such a life is very fine 
But it 's not so nice as mine. 
You must often as you trod 
Have wearied not to be abroad. 

" A Child's Garden of Verses " (Foreign Children) 

96 16 L'Isle Adam : a town about fifteen miles northwest of Paris, 
named from the larger of two islands. 

97 18 apotheosis : under the Roman Empire the formal attribution of 
divine honors to a deceased emperor or other member of the imperial 
family. Hence, as here, the exaltation of any quality to immeasurable 
limits. 

97 23 perspicuous : capable of being seen through to the conclusion. 

97 25 feuilletons : the lower section of the page of a French news- 
paper, reserved for literature, science, art, criticism, and frequently for 
novels ; the name is also used for the articles themselves. 

98 18 Verberie : once a favorite residence of the Merovingian and 
Carolingian kings of the eighth and ninth centuries. Here in 856 Ethel- 
wolf of England married Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald. 

98 24 Bradshaw's Guide: the guide started in 1839 by George Brad- 
shaw, a printer in Manchester. The time-tables were at first printed on 
a broad sheet. The first monthly guide was issued December, 1841. It 
consisted of thirty-two pages, and gave tables relating to forty-three miles 
of English railways. It contained neither maps nor advertisements. 

98 28 Walt Whitman : an American poet, born at West Hills, Long 
Island, May 31, 1819; died at Camden, New Jersey, March 26, 1892. His 
most familiar lines were written after the death of President Lincoln, 
and entitled " My Captain." 

99 20 the beasts that perish : Psalms xlix, 12. 

99 25 longevous: (lon-ge-vus) ' living a long time ' (obsolete or rare). 
99 2() metaphysics : the science of the inward and essential nature 
of things ; philosophy. 



NOTES 251 

100 Nirvana : the name given by Buddhists to the state of complete 
happiness in heaven, involving extinction of all personality and abso- 
lute union with the infinite. 

100 10 Buddhists : followers of Buddha or Gautama, an East Indian 
ethical teacher and philosopher who lived in the fifth century B.C. In 
their purity his teachings had many excellences, but later modifications 
have affected their integrity. 

100 13 incurious : careless. 

102 7 Great Assizes : the final judgment. 

102 18 juggle for a slice of heaven : 

For a cap and bells our lives we pay, 
Bubbles we buy with a whole world's tasking. 
'T is heaven alone which is given away, 
'T is only God may be had for the asking. 

Lowell, " The Vision of Sir Launfal " 

103 9 the English wars : the wars between France and England dur- 
ing the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries, culminating in the 
battles of Crecy, Aug. 26, 1346; Poitiers, Sept. 19, 1356; Agincourt, 
Oct. 25, 141 5; siege of Orleans, June 18, 1429; the Field of the Cloth of 
Gold, 1 520 ; and the capture of Calais by the Duke of Guise, Jan. 7, 1 558. 

103 27 ex voto: ' as a votive offering.' 

104 12 St. Joseph : (the carpenter), the husband of the Virgin Mary. 

104 30 light in chaos : see Genesis i, 3. 

105 () St. Dominic ; founder of the Dominican order of monks estab- 
lished to put down the Albigenses and other heretics in the Cevennes; 
born in Spain, 1170; died in Italy, Aug. 6, 1221. 

105 7 St. Catherine of Siena: born March 25, 1347 ; died at Rome, 
April 29, 1380. In 1376 she effected the return to Rome of Gregory XI 
from his residence in Avignon, and so ended what has been called 
"the Babylonish captivity of the Church." In 1378 she arranged a 
peace between the Florentines and Urban VI. She is noted as having 
had miraculously reproduced on her hands, feet, and heart the " stig- 
mata," or impressions of the wounds on the crucified body of Christ. 
— Pope Gregory (XVI): born at Bellona, Italy, Sept. 18, 1765; died at 
Rome, June i, 1846; he was pope, 1831-1846. 

105 13 choragus : in the ancient Greek theater the leader of the 
chorus. 

105 17 dizaine: ' a group of ten prayers.' 

105 25 purgatory : a place of purgation in which the souls of those 
dying penitent arc purified from sin. Impenitents are not allowed there. 



252 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

105 27 exciseman : see a biography of Robert Burns, and Carlyle's 
and Stevenson's essays on Burns. 

106 2 Euclid : a famous Greek geometer, whose work forms the basis 
of all teaching of this subject. He lived about 300 B.C. 

108 3 ragout: stewed meat and vegetables cut small and cooked 
brown with high seasoning. 

108 18 bumper : a crowded house. 

108 23 proscenium : in the ancient theater, the stage before the back 
wall ; in the modern theater, that part which lies before the curtain and 
the orchestra. 

109 25 " We are not cotton spinners all " : see " The Third of Febru- 
ary, 1852," — poem by Tennyson, stanza viii, 1. 3. 

109 33 aff-n-aff: ' half and half,' a mixture of malt liquors ; especially 
in England, a mixture of porter and ale. 

110 1() "'Tis better to have loved and lost": see Tennyson, "In 
Memoriam," XXVII. 

110 18 Endymion : in the Greek mythology Endymion was con- 
demned to endless sleep and everlasting youth, and Selene (the Moon) 
kissed him every night. See " Endymion "by John Keats ; also Helen A. 
Clark's " Ancient Myths in Modern Poets." 

110 19 Audrey : see " As You Like It," III, iii, i. 

112 10 Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Ferrario and Mr. de Vauversin will have 
the honor of singing this evening the following pieces : Miss Ferrario will sing 
" Mignon," " Birds Lightly on the Wing," " France," " Frenchmen Sleep There," 
" The Blue Chateau," " Where will you go " ; M. de Vauversin, Madame Fontaine, 
and M. Robinet : "The Divers on Horseback," "The Discontented Husband," 
" Be Quiet, You Rascal," " My Queer Neighbor," " Happy like That," " How We 
are Deceived." 

112 19 salle-a-manger : ' dining room.' 

, 112 32 Chatelet : a well-known Parisian theater. 

113 14 Maire : the mayor. 

114 12 Tenez, messieurs, je vais vous le dire: ' now then, gentlemen, 
I will tell you what it is.' 

114 19 the Muses : the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, who 
presided over poetry, music, science, and art. 

114 27 Pyramus and Thisbe: see Shakespeare's " Midsummer Night's 
Dream " ; also Ovid, " Metamorphoses," Bk. IV. 

114 34 the unities : the so-called Aristotelian unities of time, place, 
and action, on which the French classical dramatic writers and critics 
base their practical rules of dramatic construction {%q.& Atlantic Monthly^ 
March, 1910, Vol. CV, p. 346). 



NOTES 253 

115 20 tittups : a prancing, a springing about. 

116 7 Theophile Gautier : French poet, critic, and novelist, born at 
Tarbes, Aug. 31, 181 1 ; died at Paris, Oct. 23, 1872. He was famous in 
the French romantic movement. 

116 17 Havre : formerly called Havre de Grace; founded in 1509 by 
Louis Xn. Being situated at the mouth of the Seine, it is the seaport 
of Paris, and is one of the most important towns in France. 

118 12 Charles of Orleans : son of Duke Louis of Orleans, born 
May 26, 1391 ; died Jan. 4, 1495. ^^ ^^s taken prisoner by the English 
at Agincourt in 141 5, and remained in captivity until 1440 (see Steven- 
son's essay). 

118 13 English roundels : rondels. Poems in fixed form borrowed 
from the French, having a peculiar and set arrangement of lines. 
Charles of Orleans gave it distinct form. 

118 14 Mr. Lang : Andrew Lang, Scottish essayist, poet, and critic, 
friend of Stevenson, born at Selkirk, March 31, 1844. — Mr. Dobson : 
Austin Dobson, born at Plymouth, England, Jan. 18, 1840; a poet and 
biographer, and friend of Stevenson. — Mr. Henley : William E. Henley, 
born Jan. 23, 1849 > died July 12, 1903. A well-known writer and critic, 
and friend of Stevenson. 

Stevenson's letters, edited by another friend, Sidney Colvin, give 
interesting light on his relations with these men. 

118 17 Michelet : Jules Michelet, French historian, born at Paris, 
Aug. 21, 1798; died at Hyeres, Feb. 9, 1874. 

119 11 Villon : Fran9ois Villon, one of the earliest P^ench poets, 
born about 1431 in Paris, and died 1484 (see Stevenson's essay). 

119 30 Franco-Prussian war : the war of 1870-187 1 between France 
and Germany, closed by the Peace of Frankfort, March 10, 187 1. 

119 31 uhlans : light cavalry armed with a lance. Their uniform has 
a semi-oriental character, with loose sleeves and full trousers. The Prus- 
sian uhlans were especially famous. 

120 18 grenadine : " the crystallizable principle that is extracted from 
the bark and root of the pomegranate" (Littre); "a sweet drink or 
sirup, used as a remedy for colds" (Larousse). 

120 24 rabbinical : Jewish doctors, expounders of the law, are called 
rabbis. They are governed by literal interpretation. Hence any one so 
bound is said to be held like a rabbi or in a rabbinical manner. 

121 6 Childe Roland to the dark tower came : see " King Lear," HI, iv, 
187. Browning's poem of that title was occasioned by this line as sung 
by Edgar. 

121 9 ''Monsieur est voyageur .?" ; ' monsieur is a traveler } ' 



2 54 AN INLAND VOYAGE 

121 20 Bardolph's : see " Henry IV," Parts I and II, and " Henry V," 
for his characteristics. 

122 33 contumelious : contemptuous. 

123 13 Pas de plaisanterie, monsieur! : ' no joking, monsieur.' 
123 18 Mais oui. Tr'es bien: ' yes ; very well.' 

123 19 Comment, monsieur ! : 'how?' 

123 23 Enfin, ilfaut enfinir: ' it 's necessary to make an end.' 

124 27 voyou : 'blackguard.' 

12714 ''Alors, monsieur, vous etes le fils d^un baron?'': 'then, sir, 
you are the son of a baron.'" 

127 1(3-17 ''Alors, ce n^est pas voire passeport!" : 'then this is not 
your passport.' 

128 7 ''Eh bien,'' he said, "ye suppose quHl faut Idcher voire cama- 
rade" : ' I suppose it is necessary to release your companion.' 

128 9 proces-verbal : ' official report.' 

128 10 There were many works burned at Alexandria : in 640 a.d. by 
the Saracens. 

128 12 the British Museum : at Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury, 
London, founded in 1753. 

129 15 matador : the man whose duty it is in a bull fight to kill the 
beast, after it has been sufficiently excited. 

129 32 befrogged : ornamented. 

130 5 ''Suivez!": 'follow.' 

130 () The arrest of the members : what is known in English history 
as "Pride's Purge," Dec. 6, 1648, when members of the House of 
Commons who favored reconciliation with King Charles were forcibly 
ejected. — the oath of the Tennis Court : 

On June 20, 1789, when the French deputies to the States General found 
themselves unable to enter their hall in consequence of a royal decree suspend- 
ing the sittings of the body, they ran in a crowd to the largest building they could 
find in Versailles, namely the Tennis Court. Here they swore they would 
never separate until a constitution for France had been drawn up. This oath 
gave the National Assembly the bond of cohesion which it had hitherto lacked. — 
Stephens, " History of the French Revoludon," Vol. I, p. 62. 
— the signing of the Declaration of Independence : July 4, 1776. 

130 7 Mark Antony's oration : see Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar," III, 
ii, 78. 

130 31 Siron's : see " Later Essays" of Stevenson's (Fontainebleau, 
p. 212), " That excellent artistic barrack"; see also " Stevenson's Life," 
by Balfour, p. 1 54, and " A Chronicle of Friendships," by Will H. Low. 



TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

Dedication. 1 Sidney Colvin : an English critic and essayist, born in 
1845 (editor of Stevenson's "Letters," and his close friend). 

4 John Bunyan : ( 1 628-1 688) ; the author of " The Pilgrim's Progress " 
(1678). See Stevenson's essay, " Books which have Influenced Me." 

135 1 Le Monastier : for a longer description see A Mountain Town 
in France, in Stevenson's " Essays." 

135 2 Le Pay : the Roman Podium, the ancient capital of Velay, 
and now the chief town of the department of the Haute- Loire. Noted 
for a remarkable cathedral dating from the eleventh and twelfth cen- 
turies, and a colossal statue of the Virgin, fifty-two feet in height, on 
a pedestal of twenty feet, erected in i860, and made from more than 
two hundred Russian cannon taken at Sebastopol. 

135 Legitimists : those who supported the claim of the elder line 
of the Bourbons to the throne of France. 

Some illustrious or ancient families who had retained great territorial posi- 
tions or had lived in honored poverty, some members of higher clergy, some 
respected chiefs at the head of the army, or gallant regimental officers,. some 
writers, some magistrates, and men of the legal profession, alike prudent and 
pious, such was the roll of the Legitimist party. — G. Hanotaux, "Contemporary 
France," Vol. I, p. 37. 

The Orleanists supported the junior line. 

" Louis Philippe," said the Italian Diego Soria, ''wishing to make the kings of 
Europe forgive him for a throne which they accused him of having usurped, had 
no objection to offering them the libert}' of all the peoples in exchange for his 
crime." Quoted by G. Hanotaux, " Contemporary France," \'ol. I, p. 6. 

" The events of 1848 were not so far off that persons who had been attached 
to the government of July had all disappeared or entirely broken with the past." 
— G. Hanotaux, Vol. I, p. ^7. 

Imperialists : " a party which counted in its past Austerlitz and in its pro- 
gramme the liberty of the peoples ; a party which was altogether propagan- 
dist, intervention, and glory, — the party of the Bonapartists." — G. Hanotaux, 
Vol. I, p. 6. 

Republicans : '' Bonapartism once dispersed, the Republican party had per- 
haps the most solid hold on opinion." — G. Hanotaux, Vol. I, p. 34. " From the 
point of view of the classification of parties the National Assembly [of 1871] 

-55 



256 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

included about two hundred Republicans, divided by halves into Moderates and 
Radicals ; four hundred conservative monarchists, shared in nearly equal frac- 
tions between the Orleanists and Legitimists ; lastly some thirty Bonapartists." 
— G. Hanotaux, Vol. I, p. 41. 

135 11 Babylon : more often we use the other form of the word, 
" Babel," to indicate a state of confusion. 

135 17 the Cevennes : the mountain chain extending in southern 
France from the Canal du Midi northward, including the mountains of 
Vivarais to the Canal du Centre, Department of the Saone-et-Loire. 

136 !) A sleeping sack : the management of Modestine's pack must have 
been a source of exasperation and perplexity to her master, for my husband was, 
like his father before him, what the Scotch call " a handless man." Neither of 
them could tie a knot that would hold, and the inventor of the revolving lights 
and countless scientific instruments would find himself helpless before the prob- 
lem of cording a trunk, or even buttoning his own cuffs. I remember once, in 
an out-of-the-way place, my husband offering to carry wood from a distant pile 
as his share of the camp work, my sister and I to do the cooking. Our supply of 
fuel seeming very scant, we looked into the matter to find him plodding wearily 
back and forth, fetching a single stick at a time. He certainly never attained that 
neat, hurried, bite-your-thread effect that he so admired in Americans. 

Mrs. Stevenson's preface to Biographical Edition 

136 19 triumphally : seems to be a word coined by Stevenson. 

137 9 a donkey : see An Autumn Effect, in Stevenson's " Essays of 
Travel," for an interesting description of an encounter with another of 
the tribe. 

137 15 quakerish : what idea is conveyed by the use of this word ? 

138 8 fallacious : deceptive. 

138 15 spencer : a sort of sweater or jersey. 

138 24 Beaujolais : a local wine. 

138 32 vaticinations : predictions, prophecies. 

138 33 Like Christian : see Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress." 

139 13 contumelious : haughtily offensive, insolent, rude. 

139 25 fatuous: foolish. 

140 6 as an ox goeth to the slaughter : Proverbs vii, 22. 

142 2 Alais : a town on the left bank of the Gardon, the center of 
an important coal field. Near the old citadel is a bronze monument to 
Pasteur (1822-1895). Here Pasteur made his famous experiments in- 
vestigating the maladies of the silkworm. 

142 18 ''Et vous marchez comme qaf" : ' and you walk like that ! ' 
142 29 deus ex machina: ' the god from the machine.' The interven- 
tion of a god, or some unlikely event, employed by the author to relieve 



NOTES 257 

his characters from difficulties which he is not able to disentangle by 
the natural development of the plot. 

143 31 Homer's Cyclops : Polyphemus, chief of the one-eyed giants 
who were supposed to dwell in Sicily. See the Odyssey, Bk. IX. 

1441 Regis Senac, "Professor of Fencing and Champion of the two 
Americas ". . .at Tammany Hall, New York, on the loth April, 1876 : he 
defeated Colonel 7\ II. Monstery. The New York Times for April 11, 
1876, says that " M. Senac had the advantage over his opponent, both in 
agility and skill. His attack was quicker and better sustained and his 
recover}^ and defense far more effective than those of Colonel Monstery." 

144 8 I prooted mellifluously like a sucking dove : compare Bottom in 
" Midsummer Night's Dream," I, ii, 84. 

144 10 instantly : every instant, constantly. 

145 4 hypothec : in Scotch law a legal lien given to a creditor upon 
property to secure the payment of his demand. If Modestine can be 
considered a creditor, the saddle, etc., can be looked at as an hypothec. 

145 10 I had the devil's own trouble : compare Mrs. Stevenson's state- 
ment as quoted above. 

145 oO acolytes : attendants. 

14814 Mount Mezenc : a volcanic mountain 5750 feet in height, iso- 
lated and precipitous. Its sides afford excellent pasturage. From the 
top there is a fine panorama, extending westward to the mountains of 
the Cautal, northward over the mountains on both sides of the Loire 
and the valley of that river, eastward to the mountains of Dauphine 
and Savoy, as far as Mount Blanc, and southward to the Cevennes. 

149 5 in a suite : all together, connected. 

149 14 grouting : boring with his snout. 

149 24 an amateur: the FYench word for lover. Contrast p. 9, 1. 11. 

149 28 whang : chunk, piece. 

150 9 like one who ruled the roast : like one who had direction over 
the chief dish on the table ; usually written " ruled the roost," i.e. as the 
cock in the barnyard. The general meaning of both forms is to have 
direction of affairs, to domineer. 

150 28 dur comme un ane: ' tough as a donkey.' 

151 y St. Etienne : an important manufacturing town, chief of the 
Department of the Loire. The town contains an important school of 
mines. Sixteen miles away is Mount Pilat, one of the chief summits of 
the Cevennes. The mountain takes its name from the legend which 
relates that here Pontius Pilate killed himself in despairing remorse. 
A similar tale is associated with Mount Pilatus above Lake Lucerne, in 
Switzerland. 



258 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

152 33 aftermath : a second mowing of grass from the same land 
the same season. 

153 25 " Though I could reach from pole to pole " : It seems doubtful 
whether Alexander Pope, the English poet (i 688-1 744), ever wrote this 
line as it stands. In the second epistle of the second book of his " Imi- 
tations of Horace," 1. 277, he says : 

Shall fly, like Oglethorpe, from pole to pole. 

153 26 little corporal : Napoleon. 

153 28 Elie Berthet : a French noveHst (1815-1891), author of " Bete 
du Gevaudan." 

154 8 caryatides (pronounced kar-i-at-i-des) : figures of women dressed 
in long robes, serving as columns to support an entablature. 

154 22 '' D'oii ^st que vous venez ?" ; ' Where did you come from ? ' 

154 25 dudgeon : resentment, anger. 

155 23 sporadically : at irregular intervals, separately, singly. 

156 5 marish : see also p. 44, 1. 4. Now only used poetically, mean- 
ing marshy. 

156 12 chains : dance figures. The phrase " grand chain " is the 
most familiar. 

156 K) Herbert Spencer : the founder of the system of thought known 
as the Synthetic Philosophy; born April 27, 1820; died Dec. 8, 1903. 

157 4 The Beast of Gevaudan : a wolf that appeared in 1765, supposed 
to be of enormous size and strength ; when killed, it was found to be 
not at all unusual in its proportions. 

158 13 "a little farther lend thy guiding hand": 1. i of "Samson 
Agonistes" reads, "A little onward lend thy guiding hand." 

159 1 " C^est que, voyez-vous, ilfait noir" : ' you see it is dark.' 

159 3 " mats — 'C^est — de la peine'': ' but it is a troublesome matter,' 
' a difficult or laborious affair.' 

159 8 " Ce n^ est pas ca'" : ' it 's not that.' 

159 9 mais je ne sortirai pas de la parte: ' but I will not go out of 
the door.' 

159 18 ''C'est vrai, ca'\- " oui, c^est vrai. Et d'oii venez-vous?'": 
' that is true ' ; ' yes, that is true. And where do you come from ? ' 

159 29 " a farceuse " : a jester. 

160 17 Filia Barbara pater barbarior: ' a father more barbarous than 
a barbarous daughter.' Stevenson is parodying the opening line of 
Horace, Carm. I, xvi, " O matre pulchra filia pulchrior." 

161 25 bambino: a baby, particularly the representations of the Child 
Jesus in the manger at Bethlehem, as seen in many Catholic churches. 



NOTES 259 

163 4 Peyrat's "Pastors of the Desert" : " Ilistoire des Pasteurs du 
Desert," by Napoleon Teyrat (Paris, 1842). 

163 11 Ulysses : the hero of the Odyssey, husband of Penelope, and 
father of Telemachus (see Tennyson's " Ulysses"). 

165 <) What went ye out for to see ? : Matthew ii, 7. 

165 14 Balquidder and Dunrossness : parishes in West Perthshire, 
Scotland, and in the Shetland Islands. 

166 10 charge : ' load.' 

167 1 .ffisop : a wholly or partly traditional Greek fabulist of the 
sixth century B.C. This story, however, belongs to La Fontaine, " The 
Miller, his Son, and the Ass," Bk. Ill, No. i. 

169 23 Languedocian Wordsworth : Languedoc, an ancient govern- 
ment of southern France, so called {langiie d^oc, ^ oc language') from 
the special word used by the inhabitants to denote 'yes.' The Cevennes 
Mountains extend through it. The capital was Toulouse. — Wordsworth 
(William): English poet, born April 7, 1770; died April 23, 1850. 

The words quoted are from a sonnet composed in 1844 and first pub- 
lished in the Morning Post, Dec. 17, 1844, as the concluding paragraph 
to a letter protesting against the construction of the Kendal and Winder- 
mere Railroad, which reads as follows : 

A railroad is already planned along the seacoast, and another from Lancaster 
to Carlisle is in great forwardness ; an intermediate one is therefore superfluous. 
Once for all let me declare that it is not against railways, but against the abuse 
of them I am contending : 

Proud were ye, INIountains, when, in times of old, 
Your patriot sons, to stem invasive war, 
Intrenched your brows ; ye gloried in each scar; 
Now, for your shame, a Power, the thirst of Gold, 
That rules o'er Britain Hke a baneful star. 
Wills that your peace, your beauty, shall be sold, 
And clear way made for her triumphal car 
Through the beloved retreats your arms enfold ! 
Heard Ye that zi'/ustle ? As her long linked train 
Swept onwards, did the vision cross your view 1 
Yes, ye were startled ; — and in balance true, 
Weighing the mischief with the promised gain, 
Moiaitains and Vales and Floods, I call on you 
To share the passion of a just disdain. 

171 8 "Hermits" of Marco Sadeler: Marco, supposed to have been the 
son of Jan Sadeler, the Flemish engraver, possibly born in Munich 
between 1589 and 1598. It is not clearly known whether he was an 



26o TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

engraver or only a publisher of prints. It is certain that he published 
engravings by other members of the Sadeler family, but his address 
appears only in the second states of these prints. 

172 10 Dr. Pusey : Edward Bouverie Pusey, the leader of the Trac- 
tarians, who sought between the years 1833 and 1840 to reform the 
abuses in the Church of England and restore primitive Christianity; 
born near Oxford in 1800; died Sept. 16, 1882. 

173 8 Father Hospitaler : in a religious house the person whose office 
it is to receive and attend upon strangers. 

175 3 MM. les retraitants: people who enter a monastery for rest 
and prayer, without taking the vows. 

175 5 a bust of the late Pope : Pope Pius IX, who died at Rome, 
Feb. 7, 1878. — the "Imitation" (of Christ): a religious treatise sup- 
posed to have been written by St. Thomas a Kempis about 147 1. 

175 ''Life of Elizabeth Seton," evangelist ... of North America: 
Mrs. Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton, born in New York City, Aug. 28, 1774 ; 
died at Emmitsburg, Md., Jan. 4, 182 1. Founder of the order of Sisters 
of Charity (1809), of which she was the first Mother Superior. 

175 10 Cotton Mather : a famous Puritan divine, born in Boston, 
Mass., Feb. 12, 1663; died Feb. 13, 1728. Author of the important his- 
torical work, " Magnalia Christi Americana," 1702. 

175 14 the everlasting psalm: see Revelation v, 13. 

175 19 " Le temps litre" etc. : ' the free time is employed in ex- 
amination of the conscience, in confession, in making good resolu- 
tions,' etc. 

176 4 breviaries : books containing the daily offices of the Roman 
Catholic Church. 

176 4 Waverley novels : the novels by Sir Walter Scott, so called 
after his first novel, "Waverley," published in 1814, when Scott was 
forty-three years old. 

176 9 St. Basil : born in Caesarea in Cappadocia about 329 a.d., died 
there Jan. i, 379. He was bishop of Caesarea. — St. Hilarion : born at 
Thabatha near Gaza, Palestine, about 300 a.d.; died at Cyprus, 371. 
He introduced monasticism into Palestine. — St. Raphael : a Portuguese 
Benedictine monk and historian, born at Guimaraes, 1641; died at Lis- 
bon, Dec. 23, 1693. — St. Pacifique : of the thirteenth century. Con- 
verted by a sermon of St. Francis, he embraced the monastic life and 
was then named Pacificus by the saint on account of the extreme 
sweetness of his character. He was the first provincial of the minor 
orders in France. He was something of a poet, and a great many c^a/i- 
S071S and other verses have been attributed to him. 



NOTES 261 

176 10 Veuillot (Louis) : a writer of polemical works ; born at Boynes, 
Loiret, France, Oct. 11, 1S13 ; died at Paris, April 7, 1883. — Cha- 
teaubriand (Fran9ois Rene Auguste, Vicomte de) : born at St. Malo, 
France, Sept. 14, 1768 ; died at Paris, July 4, 1848. He was a statesman 
and a miscellaneous author remarkable for his style. 

17611 Moliere (Jean Baptiste Poquelin) : born at Paris, Jan. 15, 
1622; died Feb. 17, 1673. The greatest of comic dramatists and a 
distinguished actor. 

176 K) Trappist monastery : a monastic body, a branch of the Cister- 
cian order, named from the abbey where the order was founded in 
1 140. The rules include extended fasts, severe manual labor, almost 
perpetual silence, and rigorous asceticism. 

177 11 carafe : a glass water bottle. 

178 11 lay phalansteries : the dwelling place of a community of people 
not members of any religious order, but having property in common. 

178 14 Cistercian rule : the legal code of an order of monks and 
nuns which takes its name from its original convent, Citeaux, near 
Dijon in France, where the society was founded in 1098 by Robert, 
abbot of Molesme, under the rule of St. Benedict. 

178 30 an office to sing: the prescribed order or form of service, 
especially the forms for the canonical hours. 

179 10 Algiers : capital of Algeria, founded by the Arabs about 935, 
occupied by the French since 1S30. 

179 2!) complin and Salve Regina : complin is the last of the seven 
canonical hours (matins, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers, complin), 
originally said after the evening meal and before retiring to sleep, but 
in later medieval and modern usage following immediately upon ves- 
pers. — Salve Regina misericordiae (hail queen of compassion) : an 
antiphonal hymn to the Virgin Mary. 

180 1 occluded : closed up. 

180 18 the words of a French song : 

Que t'as de belles filles, 

Girofle ! 

Girofla ! 
Que t'as de belles filles, 
VAmouj' les comptera ! 

See Louis Montjoie's " Chansons Populaires de la France," Paris 

(1865), p. 85. 

How many beautiful daughters have you, 

Girofle, Girofla ! 

How many beautiful daughters have you, 

Love will count them ! 



262 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

181 20 Mende : formerly the capital of the Gevaudan, and now the 
chief town of the department of the Lozere and the seat of a bishopric. 
181 21 a grenadier in person : 

Mary Jane commands the party, 
Peter leads the rear, 
Feet in time, alert and hearty, 
Each a Grenadier. 

" Child's Garden of Verses," Marching Song 

181 24 with kilted cassock : a long clerical coat buttoned over the 
breast and reaching to the feet. — kilted : tucked up. 

182 25 Gambetta (gon-be-ta or gam-bet'a) (Leon): a French politi- 
cian, born at Cahors, France, April 3, 1838; died near Sevres, France, 
Dec. 31, 1882. 

183 14 '' Et vous pretendez mourir dans cette esptce de croyance?": 
' and you intend to die in that kind of a faith ? ' 

183 27 I think I see my father's face ! see Balfour's " Life," Vol. I, 

P-95- 

183 28 Gaetulian lion : Gaetulia was a region of northern Africa. The 
reference is to Horace, Carm. I, xxiii, 9 and 10: "But I am not seek- 
ing thee to destroy thee like a fierce tiger or Gaetulian lion." 

184 31 " C^est mon conseil comme ancien militaire'" ; " et celui de mon- 
sieur comme pretre'" : 'this is my advice as an old soldier'; ' and this 
gentleman's, as a priest.' 

185 11 " a faddling hedonist " : a trifling person who regards pleasure 
as the chief good. 

185 19 a marquis : a nobleman in rank intermediate between an earl 
or count and a duke. 

186 3 " La parole est d vous " ; ' the word is yours ' ; that is, ' it is for 
you to say.' 

187 13 burn : the Scotch term for a small stream. 

187 23 ''He, bourgeois; il est cinq heures!'': 'Hey, sir; it's five 
o'clock ! ' 

188 24 music of a bourree: a dance tune common in Auvergne. 

189 4 feyness: in old English one is /^/ when his hour of death is 
come, so that fate drives him into acts and circumstances that will 
bring death. 

189 32 Villefort : at Florae, sixteen miles from here, in 1703, after the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes, there broke out the Protestant insur- 
rection known as the War of the Camisards, so called from the camise 
worn over their clothes by the insurgents. 



NOTES 263 

190 1> '' In a more sacred or sequestered bower": compare Milton, 
" Paradise Lost," Bk. IV, 11. 705-708. 

In shadier bower 
More sacred and sequestered, though but feigned, 
Pan or Sylvanus never slept, nor Nymph 
Nor Faunus haunted. 

191 S stars rain down an influence : an allusion to the belief common 
in ancient times that there existed in the heavenly bodies ethereal fluids 
which acted favorably or unfavorably upon earthly affairs. Later the 
metaphorical use of the term in poetry has replaced the literal, and it is 
now taken as equivalent to power or virtue. 

191 10 arcana (ar-ka-na) : plural of " arcanum," a mystery (a hidden 
thing). 

19115 Montaigne (Michel I^yquem de) : the great French essayist, 
born Feb. 28, 1533; died Sept. 13, 1592. The reference is to a pas- 
sage in the essay, " There is a Good Husbandry in enjoying Life." 

They enjoy the other pleasures as they do that of sleep, without knowing it. 
To the end, that even sleep itself should not so stupidly escape from me, I have 
formerly caused myself to be disturbed in my sleep, to the end that I might the 
better and more sensibly relish and taste it. 

191 1\) the Bastille of civilization: the Bastille was a famous prison 
in Paris, destroyed July 14, 1789, by the Revolutionists (see Dickens's 
"A Tale of Two Cities"). 

194 1 'J caravanserai: an inn. 

196 o '^ like stout Cortez when, with eagle eyes, he stared on the 
Pacific " : from " On first looking into Chapman's ' Homer,' " a sonnet 
by John Keats. The usual reading of the line is " at the Pacific." 

196 '.» Pic de Finiels : a mountain 5585 feet high. 

196 U Montpellier : the capital of the department of Herault, founded 
by Charles Martel, in 737. It is celebrated for a school of medicine 
established in the twelfth century. It became a stronghold of Calvin- 
ism, and Louis XIII besieged and took it in 1622. Auguste Comte, the 
philosopher, was born there in 1798. 

196 15 Cette : the seaport of Montpellier, from the Greek Set/on ; 
it is a town of great antiquity. 

196 27 Grand Monarch : Louis XIV. 

196 30 the Camisards : the active participants in the Protestant revolt 
of 1702 in the Cevenncs, against the persecution that followed the 
revocation of the Edict of Nantes in October, 1685. 



264 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

This Edict, promulgated in 1598, had really ended religious strife in France, 
coupled as it was later with the mild and conciliatory policy of the minister 
Cardinal Richelieu. Louis XIV, however, having for his motto " I am the state " 
entered upon a career of self-aggrandisement, and, striving for uniformity in all 
things, attempted forcible reduction of all schisms, political and religious. A 
policy of gradually destroying the privileges of the dissenters was begun. They 
were shut out from public offices and trade corporations ; they were forbidden 
to marry with Roman Catholics, and the conversion of their children seven years 
old and upward was encouraged and almost enforced. When the final enact- 
ment was promulgated, it was found that explicit mention was made of all these 
things, and the destruction of all Protestant churches was ordered and a ban 
was placed on all Protestant religious meetings. Those who attended were 
liable to imprisonment and confiscation of property. Those who preached 
were to be banished. Protestant schools were suppressed. Emigration was 
forbidden, and those who left the country were declared outlaws. Rewards and 
exemptions from punishment and taxes were promised all converts to Catholicism. 
Persecutions naturally followed. 

The dwellers in the Cevennes, from which regions sprang the Waldenses 
in the twelfth century and the Albigenses in the thirteenth, resisted and 
entered upon a holy war in defense of their faith. They killed the Roman 
Catholic missionary, and, after their original leader. Esprit Seguier, had been 
slain, organized themselves under the command of La Porte, an old soldier, as 
what they were pleased to term " Children of God." 

La Porte's most famous captains were Roland and Jean Cavalier, of whom 
the latter became the more conspicuous. He was a man of obscure origin and 
was without military training, but succeeded in maintaining, for some time, a 
successful campaign against the forces of the king. A treaty which he negotiated 
proving unpopular alike to friends and foes, he left France for Switzerland and 
later moved on to Holland. He finally emigrated to England, saw service under 
this flag in Spain, and was made major general and governor of Jersey, and also 
governor of the Isle of Wight. He died in 1740. 

Roland, the other chief of the Camisards, was bom at Mas Soubeyran, de- 
partment of Gard, in 1675 ; died at the Chateau de Castelnau, near Uzes, in 1704. 
In his youth he served in a regiment of dragoons and returned to his native land 
after the peace of Ryswick (1697). He was a nephew of La Porte. Betrayed by 
one of his officers, he was shot while defending himself. His body was burned 
at Nimes and the ashes scattered to the winds. 

The revolt in the Cevennes remained active until 1705; but in 171 1, 
though the outv^ard signs had disappeared, at no time was the Protes- 
tant faith entirely extinguished, and Stevenson shoves (p. 216) that it is 
still piously cherished by many of these mountain people. See the 
article on the Camisards in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

196 32 " the discourse of every coffeehouse " : houses of entertain- 
ment where coffee and other refreshments were supplied ; much 



NOTES 265 

frequented in London during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
for the purpose of poHtical and literary conversation; the most noted 
were Wills, Button's, Child's, St. James, the Grecian, and Jonathans (see 
the Spectator^ No. I, 49, 403, 568; Ashton's " Social Life in the Reign of 
Queen Anne," chap, xviii ; Besant's " London in the Eighteenth Cen- 
tury," chap, xii ; and Macaulay's " History of England," Vol. I, chap. iii). 

197 12 Castanet (Andre): chief of the Camisards,bornat Massavaques 
(Lozere) in 1674, died at Montpellier in 1705. He emigrated after the 
peace of Ryswick (1697), returned to France in 1700, and took, in 1703, at 
the time of the insurrection of the Cevennes, the command of a regiment. 
He seized the villages of Saint- Andre-de-Valborgne and Fraissinet-de- 
Fourques. In 1704 he surrendered with Cavalier and retired to Geneva. 
But when hostilities were resumed, he returned, took part in the revolt, 
was discovered, seized, and condemned to be broken on the wheel. 

200 5 Carlisle : the chief city of Cumberland, England. 

200 G Dumfries : capital of Dumfriesshire, Scotland. Famous as the 
place where Robert Burns died. 

201 1 squired : attended as a squire. 

201 27 Archbishop Sharpe : (usually written without the final e) (1613- 
1679) ! ^ Scottish archbishop of St. Andrews, murdered on Magus Muir 
by the Covenanters, May 3, 1679. 

20128 febrile: feverish. 

202 1 Marshal Villars (Claude Louis Hector, Due de Villars) : born 
May 8, 1653 ; died July 17, 1734. Through his efforts the rebellion was 
put down. 

202 17 Lamoignon de Baville : born 1648, died 1724; a distinguished 
lawyer, commissioner at Montauban, Pau, Poitiers, and Montpellier 
(1685). He proceeded with harshness toward the repression and con- 
version of the Protestants from the moment of the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, and proved himself very vigorous against them during 
the war of the Cevennes. He protected industry and commerce, but 
often by most tyrannical means. He undertook important public works, 
notably at the port of Cette. He resigned voluntarily in 1718. 

202 18 du Chayla (Fran9ois Anglade de'Anglade) : called Abbe de 
Chayla ; born about 1650, in the diocese of Mende ; died at Pont de 
Montvert in 1702. He was a missionary to Siam, and on his return to 
France was prior of Laval, grand vicar to the bishop of Mende, and 
archpriest of the Cevennes. In this last position he had full charge 
of the missions which had for their purpose the reconversion of the 
Protestants. As Stevenson says, " The work of the propagation of the 
faith went roundly forward in his hands." 



266 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

202 27 pariah : a Hindu of low caste, performing the lowest menial 
service. 

204 1 Scavenger's Daughter : a medieval instrument of torture com- 
posed of an iron hoop, within which the victim was slowly squeezed to 
death. 

204 8 Baal : see i Kings, xviii. 

205 9 Captain Poul : " Captain Poul commanded a large force of 
horse and foot, was an old soldier of fortune, a very Ajax " (see 
Charles Taylor, " The Camisards," p. 89, London, 1893). 

205 li the Spirit of the Lord is with me : see Luke iv, 18. 

206 pass ... of Killiecrankie : a pass in Perthshire, Scotland, twenty- 
six miles northwest of Perth. Here, July 27, 1689, the Highlanders, 
under Viscount Dundee (Claverhouse), defeated the government forces 
under Mackay. Dundee was killed (see Aytoun's " Ballads of Scotland "). 

206 li) cedars of Lebanon : see Psalms xcii, 12. 

208 23 Antony Watteau (pronounced va-to) : born at Valenciennes, 
France, Oct. 10, 1684; died at Nogent-sur-Marne, France, July 18, 1721. 
A famous French genre painter, who was noted for his success in paint- 
ing scenes of conventional pastoral life and " fetes galantes " (see 
Walter Pater's " Imaginary Portraits "). 

211 19 " Connaissez-vous le Seigneur ? " ; ' do you know the Lord ? ' 

211 28 " Many are called and few chosen " : Matthew xx, 16. 

212 3 Moravians : the members of the Christian denomination en- 
titled " Unitas Fratrum," or United Brethren, which traces its origin to 
John Hus, the Bohemian reformer, died July 6, 141 5 (see "Life and 
Times of Master John Hus," by the Count Liitzow). 

212 K) a Plymouth Brother : a sect of Christians which first attracted 
notice at Plymouth, England, in 1830, but which has since extended 
over Great Britain, the United States, France, Switzerland, and Italy. 
They are also called " Darbyites," after Mr. Darby, originally a barrister, 
subsequently a clergyman of the Church of England, and later an evan- 
gelist not connected with any church, to whose efforts their origin and 
the diffusion of their principles are to be ascribed. In a narrower sense 
the Darbyites are a branch of the sect, and are entitled " Exclusive 
Brethren " on account of the orthodoxy of their views. A most inter- 
esting account of the sect is given in Edmund Gosse's autobiographic 
" Father and Son." 

212 32 Christian and Faithful : see Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress," 
Part I, chap. xi. 

214 2 a horrific country after the heart of Byron: a country whose 
appearance causes the emotion of horror. The Westminster Review, 



NOTES 267 

Vol. XIII, p. 364, speaks of something " horrifically picturesque." Com- 
pare "Lachin y Gair" (Byron's "Hours of Idleness"), reprinted in 
" Selections from Byron " (Ginnand Company) ; also " Childe Harold," 
Canto III. 

215 15 Mauchline : a town in Scotland in Ayrshire, eight miles south- 
east of Kilmarnock, on the Ayr. It has memories of Burns. — Cumnock: 
a town in Ayrshire, Scotland. 

215 21 Wigtown : the capital of the shire of that name, the south- 
westernmost county of Scotland. The occupation of the inhabitants is 
chiefly dairying. 

215 22 Muirkirk of Glenluce : twenty-one miles east-northeast of Ayr. 

215 23 Prophet Peden : Alexander Peden (about 1626-1 686). He was 
the most famed and revered of all the Scottish Covenanting preachers. 

216 2 and one fanner had seen the bones : 

" 'T is some poor fellow's skull," said he, 
" Who fell in the great victory." 

Southey, " Battle of Blenheim " 

216 15 Black Camisard and "White Camisard : bandits distinguished by 
the color of their uniform. The Miquelet was a name applied to other 
companies, especially to certain Spanish bandits countenanced by the 
king of France and named from their special leader. 

216 23 the sun returns after the rain : compare Ecclesiastes xii, 2. 

218 17 bight : a bend or curve of a river or mountain chain. 

219 12 a la belle etoile: ' in the open air.' 

220 28 carried a game bag on a baldric : a belt or girdle, usually of 
leather and richly ornamented, worn pendent from one shoulder across 
the breast and under the opposite arm, and used to support the wearer's 
sword, bugle, etc. 

223 17 Naaman in the house of Rimmon : see 2 Kings, v. 

224 15 Bruce : Robert I of Scotland, called " The Bruce " ; born 
July II, 1274; died at Cardross, Scotland, June 7, 1329. — Wallace (Sir 
William) : born about 1274; beheaded in London, Aug. 23, 1305. One 
of the Scottish heroes (see Burns's poem, " Scots wha hae wi' Wallace 
bled"). 

224 33 '' Cependant/' . . . '' coucher dehors'': 'but to sleep out of 
doors ! ' 

225 24 Sir Cloudesley Shovel : born 1650, died 1707. In 1704 he took 
part with the fleet under Sir George Rooke in the capture of Gibraltar, 
and in the action off Malaga the following year he captured Barcelona. 
In 1707 he cooperated with the Duke of Savoy in the attack on Toulon, 



268 TRAVELS WITH A DONKEY 

and, although the town was not taken, Shovel destroyed a great num- 
ber of French vessels. On the way back to England his flagship was 
wrecked on one of the Scilly Islands. He was cast ashore in a helpless 
condition, and was murdered by a woman who coveted a ring on one 
of his fingers. See the Spectator, No. 26, for a description of his tomb 
in Westminster Abbey. 

226 3 many a prosperous farmer returns : see Burns's " Cotter's Satur- 
day Night " and Gray's " Elegy." 

226 21 Rip van Winkle : see Irving's " Sketch Book." 

227 <) the voice of a woman: compare "To a Highland Girl," a poem 
by Wordsworth. 

227 11 Pippa : see " Pippa Passes," a dramatic poem by Robert 
Browning. 

227 15 amulet : an object worn superstitiously as a preventive of 
disease. 

227 2(5 Volnay : red Burgundy wine. 

231 1() Apollo : an Olympian god, son of Zeus and Latona, represent- 
ing light and life-giving power. — Mercury : son of Zeus and Maia, the 
ambassador of the gods ; also a god of darkness. 

231 17 Love : i.e. Cupid ; the Greek Eros, son of Mercury and Venus. 
Compare Milton's minor poems " L' Allegro " and " II Penseroso." 

232 12 phylloxera : the worst enemy of the European grape, caused 
by a genus of plant lice imported from central North America. No 
remedy has yet been discovered for this plague. 

234 12 The pecuniary gain : see p. 8. 

234 28 " Oui, c^est comme ca. Comme dans le nordf": ' yes, it is like 
that. Just as in the north.' 

235 7 "And, 0, The difference to me ! " 

See " She dwelt among the Untrodden Ways," a poem by William 
Wordsworth. 

235 18 Farewell, and if forever : 

Fare thee well ! and if for ever, 
Still for ever, fare thee well. — Byron 



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